Writing or sticking pieces of papers on your monitor and all over your workspace will make your place congested. You can easily avoid this by using Sticky Notes feature that allows you to write and place virtual notes on your computer screen. Whether you need to write something down for future reference or to remind yourself of tasks you need to do, managing Sticky Notes can be really helpful.
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Sticky Notes in Windows and Stickies on Mac
The app does not sync anymore. I recently added the newer app Samsung Notes which by the way opens the Notes from S Note very imperfectly on the phone. Need to work on the downward compatibility a lil bit more. So I can only give it 2 stars now as the sync is very much needed feature for this app to. Notebooks 2 is now Mac native, so it fully integrates into the macOS environment, looks and works like Mac app. Open documents in separate windows or tabs. Notebooks remembers open windows and tabs between restarts. View and edit external documents by dropping them onto Notebooks‘ icon. Jan 15, 2020 Sticky Notes has been part of Windows OS for a long time, and many have been using it as a note-taking app. However, Microsoft barely paid attention to it, and the iconic app received little to no.
Unfortunately, though not a new thing in Windows, Sticky Notes is one of the most underutilized Windows apps. Similar to Sticky Notes on Windows you have Stickies app on macOS. The features and usage are same to note down important tasks and keep on your screen for reminder.
In this article, we will explore how you can manage Sticky Notes in Windows 10 and Stickies in macOS to improve your productivity.
Sticky Note in Windows 10
First, let us go through the usage of Sticky Notes in Windows 10.
How to Create, Edit and Delete Notes?
To open Sticky Notes app in windows 10:
- Go to the Start menu, search for ‘sticky notes’ in the search box and click the app from the result.
- Once the app open, you can now type your notes. If you had previous notes, they will open when you launch the app and you can click on any note to edit.
- To add a new note, click the plus “+” sign on the top left corner. Sticky Notes also support the cut/copy and paste function.
- At the bottom of the note, you will find the formatting icons, which enable you to:
- Bold, add italics or underline the text.
- Cancel (Strike an item on your note).
- Or add bullet points.
- Note that you can resize the note by placing the cursor at the edge of the note box and drag to either increase or reduce the size.
- You can personalize the notes further by adding a different background color. To do so, click the 3 dots on the upper-right corner of the note and select a color on your choice.
- To delete the note, click on the “Delete note” option and confirm the action by clicking “Delete” on the resulting prompt.
- By clicking the close “X” button, you will close the note but you can reopen the note whenever you need to.
- You can view the list of all your notes by clicking the 3 dots icon and select “Note list” on the menu. Here you can search through the notes or delete a note by clicking the delete icon.
Configure Sticky Notes Settings
One of the major improvements on the Sticky Notes app is the ability to sync your note with your Microsoft account and “Insights” which make it possible to integrate notes with other Windows 10 features and apps.
How to Sync Your Notes to the Cloud?
If you have a Microsoft account, you can sync your notes and access the Sticky Notes from your multiple Windows device.
- Click the cog icon at the top of the notes list and then the “Sign in” button on the resulting window.
- This gives you the option to sign in with your personal, work or school account. Select an account and click “Continue” at the bottom of the pop-up.
- Click the “Sync Now” Icon at the bottom of the settings windows to sync your notes.
- If you sign in on another Windows 10 PC, you will be able to access your notes from the cloud storage.
Integrating Your Sticky Notes with Windows 10 Apps
- Under the “General settings” turn on the “Enable insights” switch to integrate the notes with Cortana and other Windows 10 features.
- For instance, insights allow you to link your notes with other Windows 10 apps. For instance, if you have a scheduled task, Sticky Notes will prompt you to add a reminder for it.
Mac Notes App
- You can also integrate the notes with the Windows 10 emailing apps (to send automatic emails to a contact), calling app like the skype or browser to open a link directly from the notes.
- To see the available insights, click on the link the created links and click on the insight prompt at the bottom of the note.
Create a Separate Desktop for Your Notes
If you are handling bulky notes, they may clutter your desktop making it disorganized. You can avoid this by creating a separate desktop to display your Sticky Notes. This makes it easy to organize and access your notes.
- Press the “Win + Tab” keys on your keyboard to open the task view and click the “Add Desktop” icon at the top left corner.
- If you place your Sticky Notes on this new desktop, they will not show up on the other desktop so your primary desktop will remain organized.
Stickies in MacBook
Stickies is one of the default apps supplied with macOS operating system. You can open Stickies by:
- Press, “Command + Space” to open the Spotlight Search box.
- Type “stickies” and open Stickies app from the results.
- Enter the notes and keep it as a reminder.
Customizing Stickies
You can go through the menu option to change the color, keep the sticky note on top and zoom the size. Alternatively, right click on the Stickies to view various options for changing orientation, sharing the notes, changing color, etc.
You can manage most other features similar to Sticky Notes on Windows 10.
Conclusion
Sticky Notes and Stickies are one of the most useful tools available in Windows and macOS. It supports a wide range of options, making it possible to customize and manage your notes on the screen. The above tips show you how to use and manage Sticky Notes in Windows 10 for a better experienced and enhance your productivity along with managing Stickies app in macOS.
All most every version of Windows comes with the Sticky Notes app inbuilt, if not it can be easily downloaded from the Microsoft Store for free. With all the usability quotient it has got, there are problems with Sticky Notes. You cannot set reminders, alarms, passwords or send the Sticky Notes through email. Heck, you cannot even paste pictures or print your notes. If you feel these problems too then it is better to switch and here are some solid alternatives for Sticky notes.
In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the best alternatives to Windows native Sticky notes app. If you are looking for Sticky notes alternative for macOS, check out the inbuilt Notes app or Unclutter ($9).
Read: Best Notes App for Windows to Increase Productivity
Sticky Notes Alternatives
1. Simple Sticky Notes
Simple Sticky Notes looks similar to the native Sticky Note app but goes a mile ahead in terms of features. It has the same layout and a bunch of text formatting options like different font styles, font colors, hyperlink. The notes support Images, Date & Time as well as special characters. If you have already copied the text onto the clipboard, you can choose to create a sticky note directly with the copied text in it. You can trigger this by pressing Alt+V which serves as a hotkey. The app houses many hotkeys as triggers and you can customize them as per your preference.
The settings menu lets you back up the sticky notes to a database file and restores from the same. You can easily transfer this database file through the Network and restore your notes back on the other system. The Sticky Notes manager lets you manage all the notes through a single screen. The added feature which I liked was the Recycle bin which consists of your deleted Sticky Notes and you can even choose to restore them back.
Where simple sticky notes fell short is the security. You cannot encrypt the database file which makes it vulnerable if you transfer it over the network. You cannot lock the Sticky Notes, so it can be accidentally or easily modified by people using your laptop. The app doesn’t let you export the Sticky Notes in a .pdf or .docx format.
Download Simple Sticky Notes (free)
2. Stickies
Apart from all the features that Simple Sticky Notes provide, Stickies lets you lock the content of your Stick Notes. At times, I end up writing my passwords on the sticky notes which is not a good practice but Stickies lets you get away with that by encrypting your sticky notes. You can choose a strong password and encrypt the stickies and this will keep them locked and invisible. You need to be careful with the password because there is no option to retrieve your stickies if you forget the password.
Stickies also lets you quickly Google the text in your sticky notes but it inherently uses Internet Explorer as the browser which is not something many would like. https://fruitever600.weebly.com/blog/carne-leao-2019-download-mac. There is an added feature that lets you attach stickies to a particular application or window which triggers it to pop up as soon as you open the specified application. You can choose to add friends in Stickies and send them Sticky Notes directly via their IP addresses. The app has an option to enter SMTP configurations which enables you to directly send sticky notes via email.
Although Stickies has all the advanced features that you could ask for, it lacks a basic spell checker. The app also doesn’t provide you a search menu on the go so you have to scale through the options menu to reach the search bar. You don’t get any cloud storage and the notes are backed up on your local disk.
Download Stickies (free) Voicemeeter banana download for mac.
3. NoteZilla
Unlike all the other apps in this list, NoteZilla has a full-fledged suite of mobile and desktop applications. That means you can sync your sticky notes from your mobile to the desktop and also store them on the cloud. You can readily download your sticky notes on any devices by just signing in with your NoteZilla account. Obviously, this comes with a price tag of $ 15/year. Initially, you get a 45 day trial period.
The search bar provided helps to search through the sticky notes and that helps if you have a lot of Sticky Notes lying around. Unlike the above-mentioned apps, NoteZilla has an inbuilt spell checker which marks the text red if it is misspelled. It has an inbuilt dictionary where you can add words over a point of time.
It has an intuitive Send Notes menu where you can choose to add people by IP or DNS names. You can also create a group with a bunch of people just in case if you want to send the notes to all of them at once. All the people should have NoteZilla installed on their system. This works great within a workspace where you share a lot of data with each other.
I could hardly find any downside in NoteZilla except that you cannot choose to lock individual Sticky Notes with a password.
Download NoteZilla (free)
4. Pnotes.NET
PNotes.NET is a portable alternative to Sticky Notes with almost all the features I can think of. It is a freeware that runs on top of .NET framework 4.5 which makes it Windows-dependent. They have an older variant called PNotes which can run on any platform since it is written in C.
PNotes lets you password-lock and encrypts each Sticky Note individually. This is a handy feature to keep your credentials safe on a sticky note from unwanted access. Lightroom free download mac reddit.
A convenient feature which I found was Diary which creates a sticky note titled with the current date. Wacom desktop center mac download. This really helps to sort the sticky notes based on dates. Unlike Stickies, PNotes uses your default browser to quickly search texts from the notes. It also provides you the option to export sticky notes to PDF, RTF or One Note etc.
This could be the epitome of all sticky notes but so many features make the menu quite cluttered which is quite scary to look at. Since this is portable the app it needs to be running the entire time in the background. There are times when the app ceases to function in the background and this causes an annoying dialogue box to pop up every time.
Download PNotes.NET (free)
![App App](/uploads/1/2/6/4/126489411/496414834.gif)
Apple Notes For Windows
5. Google Keep
This is sort of an alternative if you are too deep into the Google system. It is a web app but can be easily converted to a standalone app using the Web2App platform. The UI is minimal and clean and the real-time syncing works effortlessly like any other Google Product. Download the Keep Notes mobile application and all your notes will be accessible through your mobile device.
Read: Best Free Google Keep Notes Alternative for Notetakers
You can set reminders like any other Sticky Notes app but since this product is from Google, the reminder is synced with your Google calendar app and the reminder is synced with your phone. None of the sticky note apps have a speech-to-text option but with Keep, there is a workaround available. You can dictate the notes to Google Assistant which will, in turn, save them to Keep and this makes it really handy. If you browse a lot over the Internet then you can try the Chrome extension which lets you quickly save any text from the browser to keep with just a right click.
The only downside to this is that there is no dedicated app for windows.
Register for Google Keep (free)
6. One Note
I know One Note is not sticky notes and it shouldn’t be an alternative to Sticky Notes but comes bundled with the Office 365 suite and you can also use it as a sticky note with its Quick Note feature. As soon as you press Win + N, it opens a side note which is like a floating window and you can quickly note down things. This option works even if One Note is not running in the background.
Since you are using One Note, all the features of Note are inherently present on Side Note. You can do text formatting, set reminders, add pictures and the most salient feature that I tend to use the most is the voice recorder. Instead of typing simple information, I rather record them for later use. It would have been great if there was a speech-to-text converter. You can save all your notes on One drive and it can be easily synced throughout your devices.
Download One Note
Which is the best Sticky Notes Alternatives?
If you just need a basic Sticky Notes with basic added features, Simple Sticky Notes should be the ideal choice. You can give NoteZilla a try since it has a good package for all your devices. Keep Notes is good for Android users who occasionally use sticky notes on the desktop. If you don’t want to install any 3rd party apps, One Note should do the job pretty well.
Let me know what’s your choice in the comments below.