# Sticky Notes for Mac: Stickies, Quick Note and Alternatives > Sticky notes for Mac, compared: Apple’s free Stickies, Quick Note and Notes widgets, NotchOwl’s notepad in the notch, plus Tot, Antinote and Unclutter. By Aditya Jaiswal, founder of NotchOwl. Published 2026-11-11, updated 2026-11-11. Canonical URL: https://www.notchowl.com/blog/sticky-notes-on-mac The best sticky notes for Mac are already on your Mac: Apple’s Stickies app puts colored notes on the desktop, and Quick Note in the Notes app opens a small note from anywhere with Fn–Q. If your sticky notes are mostly to-dos that vanish behind windows, NotchOwl, my own notch app, has a daily notepad in the MacBook notch that turns any line into a task. Stickies and Quick Note are free, and third-party apps such as Tot, Antinote and Unclutter add a hotkey, a menu bar home or sync. I’m biased toward NotchOwl, so I say plainly where Apple’s free apps are the better choice. Features and prices below were checked on Apple’s support pages, the developers’ sites and the Mac App Store in November 2026, on macOS 27. ## Sticky notes for Mac at a glance Table: Sticky notes options for Mac compared by price, how the note stays in view and whether it reaches your iPhone (US prices, November 2026) | Option | Price | How it stays in view | On iPhone too? | Best for | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Stickies | Free, built in | Notes on the desktop; Float on Top per note | No | Notes you want to see all day on one Mac | | Quick Note | Free, part of Notes | Opens with Fn–Q or a hot corner | Yes, with iCloud Notes | Catching a thought or a web link fast | | Notes widget and Keep on Top | Free, part of Notes | A widget on the desktop, or a note window kept in front | Yes, with iCloud Notes | Reference notes you also need on your phone | | NotchOwl | $12 once, up to 3 Macs | Opens from the notch or Option–N | No; tasks can sync through Apple Reminders | Notes that turn into tasks | | Tot | Free download; Tot for macOS $19.99 in-app | Seven notes from the menu bar | iCloud sync across Apple devices | Seven colored scratch notes and nothing more | | Antinote | $5 once; free trial | ⌥A hotkey; can pin above other windows | No (iPhone version in beta) | Throwaway notes with built-in math | | Unclutter | $19.99 | Pulls down from the top edge of the screen | Syncs between Macs, not iPhone | Notes, clipboard history and files in one panel | > On a Mac, Stickies is the free built-in app for notes that stay on the desktop, Quick Note in Apple Notes is the fastest way to jot something down and have it on your iPhone, and third-party apps add a notepad in the notch (NotchOwl), hotkeys or a menu bar home. ## Stickies for Mac: Apple’s built-in sticky notes app Stickies has come with the Mac since the 1990s and is still there in macOS 27. Apple’s [Stickies User Guide](https://support.apple.com/guide/stickies/welcome/mac) describes it simply: notes, lists and pictures on your desktop, saved automatically, shown only while Stickies is open. MacMost’s video shows how to use Stickies to keep small notes within reach: [Keep Small Notes Always In Reach On Your Mac With Stickies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD5xgdK1EXQ "MacMost") ### How to open Stickies - **Spotlight:** press Command–Space, type “Stickies” and press Return. - **Finder:** open the Applications folder and double-click Stickies. - **Dock:** once it’s open, Control-click its Dock icon and choose Options › Keep in Dock. ### Make a note, change its color and keep it on top Choose File › New Note and start typing. The first line becomes the note’s title when you collapse it, and everything saves as you type; there is no Save step. - **Color:** the Color menu has yellow, blue, green, pink, purple and gray. - **Float on Top:** choose Window › Float on Top, and that note stays in front of every other app’s windows. It’s the setting that makes Stickies behave like a real note stuck to your screen. - **Translucent:** Window › Translucent makes the note see-through, so a floating note covers less of what’s behind it. - **Collapse:** double-click the title bar to fold a note down to its first line, and again to open it. Window › Collapse All tidies every note at once. - **Arrange:** Window › Arrange By lines notes up by color, content, date or location on screen. - **Your own default:** format a note the way you like, with a font and color, then choose Window › Use as Default, and new notes start that way. ### Lists, pictures and finding text Press Option–Tab to start a bulleted list, then Tab and Shift–Tab to indent and outdent. Drag a picture or PDF into a note to add it; Apple says Markup tools let you crop, rotate or draw on it. Edit › Find searches your notes and can replace text too. ### Import, export and moving notes to Notes File › Import Text and File › Export Text move a single note in or out as plain text, RTF or RTFD. The more useful command is **File › Export All to Notes**: it copies every sticky into the Notes app, in an “Imported Notes” folder with a subfolder for each color, keeping formatting, links and pictures. Your notes stay in Stickies too, so nothing is lost if you change your mind. ### Keep your stickies on screen after a restart Stickies notes appear only while the app is open. To have them back every time you log in, open System Settings › General › Login Items & Extensions, click the Add button under Open at Login, and choose Stickies. ### Where Stickies falls short - **It stays on one Mac.** There is no iCloud sync and no iPhone version. A note you write at your desk won’t be on your phone at the shop. - **It lives on the desktop.** Unless a note floats on top, every app window covers it. A floating note, in turn, covers part of whatever you’re working on. - **It doesn’t remind you.** A sticky note has no date or alert. “Call the dentist” sits there until you happen to look at it. - **It piles up.** Stickies has no folders or archive, so a busy desktop slowly fills with old notes. For a short-term note you need to see, Stickies is still hard to beat for free. For anything that should follow you, or ring at a time, use Notes or a task app. ## Quick Note: the fastest note on a Mac Quick Note is part of Apple Notes, added in macOS Monterey. It opens a small note window over whatever you’re doing, and it is the best built-in answer to “I just need to write this down”. Apple’s [Quick Note guide](https://support.apple.com/guide/notes/create-a-quick-note-apdf028f7034/mac) lists the ways in: - **Keyboard:** hold Fn (the Globe key) and press Q. - **Hot corner:** move the pointer to the bottom-right corner of the screen and click the note that appears. Change or turn off this corner in System Settings › Desktop & Dock › Hot Corners. - **From Safari:** click the Share button and choose Add to Quick Note to save the page’s link. Or select text, Control-click it and choose Add to Quick Note; the text stays highlighted when you return to the page. Each new Quick Note picks up the last one you wrote. If you’d rather start fresh each time, open Notes › Settings and turn off **Always resume to last Quick Note**. Quick Notes are saved in a Quick Notes folder in the Notes app, and with Notes turned on in iCloud they show up on your iPhone and iPad too. One small limit: Apple notes that Quick Notes can’t be locked. Quick Note fixes the two biggest Stickies problems, sync and clutter, because every note goes into the Notes library instead of sitting on the desktop. What it doesn’t do is stay in view: once you click away, the note is out of sight until you open it again. ## Notes widgets and a note that stays in front If you keep a note you refer to all day, such as a packing list or a phone number, Apple Notes has two more ways to keep it visible. - **Notes widgets.** Notes has a Note widget, which shows one note, and a Folder widget, which shows a folder. Control-click the desktop and choose Edit Widgets, or click the date and time in the menu bar for Notification Center, then add Notes. Clicking the widget opens that note in Notes. You can add several Note widgets for several notes. Apple explains the steps in [Add and customize widgets on Mac](https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/add-and-customize-widgets-mchl52be5da5/mac). - **Keep on Top.** Double-click a note in the Notes list to open it in a window of its own, then choose Window › Keep on Top. That note now floats over other apps like a sticky. Choose it again to let the window go. Like Stickies’ desktop notes, widgets on the desktop sit behind your windows, and you see them only when you move windows aside. Notification Center widgets are one click on the clock away. ## Where a notepad in the notch fits Most sticky notes have one of two lives. Either they’re reference, something you need to see, or they’re a task in disguise: “email Sam”, “renew passport”, “buy milk”. Stickies and Notes are good at the first kind. The second kind tends to sit on the desktop until it’s too late, because a note can’t remind you of anything. NotchOwl is built for the second kind. Hover over the MacBook notch or press Option–N, and today’s tasks, a focus timer, a daily notepad and the next two weeks of calendar events drop down over whatever app you’re in. ![NotchOwl Notepad trip notes beside the Tasks card, where Renew passport just became a task](/images/blog/en/notepad-to-task-cinematic.jpg) *Turn a line of the Notepad into a task with Command–Return; it joins today’s list.* - **A notepad for each day.** NotchOwl’s Notepad saves as you type, with a fresh page each day, so yesterday’s notes don’t crowd today’s. You can also dictate into it; speech is recognized on the Mac. - **Command–Return makes a task.** Put the cursor on a line and press Command–Return, and that line becomes a task. Tasks can carry a reminder time, a priority and a project, and when a reminder comes due the notch opens with a chime, with Snooze and Done right there. - **Clips for the rest.** New screenshots, screen recordings and anything you copy hang on a line in the notch. Click a clip to copy it again, or drag it into any app. That covers the “I’ll paste this in a minute” notes that otherwise end up on a sticky. - **One hover away, never in the way.** The notepad sits behind the notch, not on top of your work, and it works on Macs without a notch too: NotchOwl draws its own notch on external monitors and opens at the top center of other screens. - **Your AI agent can write in it.** NotchOwl’s local MCP server lets Claude Code, the Claude desktop app and Cursor read and write the notepad, so you can ask Claude to turn today’s notes into tasks. See [how to connect Claude to NotchOwl](/blog/claude-mcp-to-do-list-mac). - **It stays on your Mac.** Tasks, notes and focus history stay on the Mac. Optional Apple Reminders sync can send tasks to your iPhone and Apple Watch, but the notepad itself isn’t synced. ![NotchOwl Clips with a copied note, a copied maps.apple.com link and a screenshot of a Home checklist](/images/blog/en/clips-light.jpg) *Clips keeps copied notes and links next to your screenshots, ready to paste.* NotchOwl’s notepad has no colors, it’s one page per day rather than many separate notes, and it isn’t visible until you hover the notch. If you want a yellow note you can see all day out of the corner of your eye, Stickies with Float on Top does that better and costs nothing. NotchOwl also has no iPhone app, needs an Apple silicon Mac with macOS 14 Sonoma or later, and has no free trial: it costs $12 once for up to 3 Macs (an early-bird price, normally $39) with a 7-day money-back guarantee. You can [see what the license includes](/#pricing) or [download NotchOwl](/download). If notes are mainly how you keep track of what to do, [the best menu bar to-do apps for Mac](/blog/best-menu-bar-to-do-apps-mac) compares more apps that keep tasks one click away. For a side-by-side with another notch app that has notes, read [NotchOwl vs Notchable](/blog/notchowl-vs-notchable). ## Third-party sticky notes apps for Mac Apple’s apps cover most needs, and NotchOwl, above, covers notes that are really tasks. These three are worth a look if you want a hotkey, a home in the menu bar, or notes that clear themselves away. ### Tot: seven colored notes in the menu bar Tot by The Iconfactory gives you exactly seven notes, shown as seven colored dots, and no way to add an eighth. That limit is the point: Tot is a scratchpad you keep emptying, not an archive. It lives in the menu bar, supports Markdown or rich text, and syncs through iCloud across Apple devices. The [Mac App Store listing](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tot/id1491071483?mt=12) shows Tot as a free download with a $19.99 in-app purchase, Tot for macOS, and it needs macOS 14 or later. - **Pick Tot if** Stickies feels messy and you want a few notes that are always one click away in the menu bar. ### Antinote: a scratchpad for throwaway notes [Antinote](https://antinote.io) calls itself a scratchpad for temporary thoughts, meant to sit beside your real notes app rather than replace it. Press ⌥A in any app to bring it up, pin its window above everything else, and keep it in the Dock, the menu bar, both or neither. Notes can be set to expire, deleted notes go to a recoverable trash, and typing “math” on a note’s first line turns it into a calculator with unit and currency conversion. Antinote costs $5 once with lifetime updates, has a free trial, and needs macOS 14 or later. It is Mac-only for now; its site lists an iPhone version in beta. - **Pick Antinote if** most of your sticky notes are phone numbers, sums and other things you need for an hour, not a month. ### Unclutter: notes, clipboard and files in one pull-down panel Unclutter hides a panel above the top edge of the screen: move the pointer to the very top and scroll down, and it slides open with quick notes, clipboard history and a place to park files. Notes are searchable and can sync across your Macs through iCloud Drive or Dropbox. Unclutter costs $19.99 on the [Mac App Store](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/unclutter/id577085396?mt=12), with no iPhone app. - **Pick Unclutter if** you also want clipboard history and a file drop zone, and like a gesture better than a hotkey. ### What about Microsoft Sticky Notes? People moving from Windows often look for Microsoft Sticky Notes first. Microsoft’s page on [seeing your sticky notes on other devices](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/see-your-sticky-notes-on-other-devices-and-the-web-cf4bacd0-c042-46fd-9077-ca8c82dc0236) lists Windows, OneNote on iPhone, iPad and Android, Outlook and the web, but no Mac app. On a Mac, sign in at onenote.com/stickynotes in a browser to read and edit them, or export them once and move to Stickies or Notes. ## Which sticky notes app should you use? - **You want free notes you can see all day on one Mac:** Stickies, with Float on Top on the one note that matters and Login Items so they come back after a restart. - **You want to jot something down fast and have it on your iPhone:** Quick Note, with Fn–Q. Turn on iCloud for Notes. - **You want a reference note pinned in view:** a Notes widget, or a Notes window with Keep on Top. - **Your sticky notes are really to-dos you keep forgetting:** NotchOwl’s notepad turns them into tasks with reminders. If you have ADHD and lose track of notes in other windows, [the best ADHD apps for Mac](/blog/best-adhd-apps-for-mac) covers more tools built for that. - **You want a handful of scratch notes in the menu bar:** Tot. - **Your notes are mostly short-lived sums and snippets:** Antinote. - **You also want clipboard history and a file drop zone:** Unclutter. ## Tips for sticky notes that don’t pile up - **Give each color one job.** Yellow for today, blue for reference, pink for waiting on someone. Stickies’ Arrange By Color then groups them, and Export All to Notes files them by color. - **Float only one note.** A single floating note gets read. Five floating notes get ignored and cover your work. - **Move tasks out.** Anything with a deadline belongs in an app that can remind you: NotchOwl’s Command–Return, Apple Reminders or your to-do app. - **Clear the desk on Fridays.** Export what you want to keep to Notes, then delete the rest. Stickies keeps its notes in ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Stickies/Data/Library/Stickies, which your Time Machine backup includes along with the rest of your home folder. ## Frequently asked questions ### Does the Mac have a built-in sticky notes app? Yes. Stickies comes with every Mac and lives in the Applications folder. It puts colored notes on your desktop that save automatically. Apple’s Notes app also has Quick Note, a small note you open from anywhere with Fn–Q or a hot corner. ### How do I keep a sticky note on top of other windows on a Mac? In Stickies, click the note and choose Window › Float on Top. In Apple Notes, double-click a note to open it in its own window, then choose Window › Keep on Top. Both stay in front of other apps until you turn the option off. ### Do Mac Stickies sync to iPhone? No. Stickies has no iCloud sync and no iPhone version, so its notes stay on the Mac you wrote them on. To move them, choose File › Export All to Notes in Stickies; the notes land in the Notes app, which syncs through iCloud. ### How do I open a Quick Note on a Mac? Hold the Fn (Globe) key and press Q, or move the pointer to the bottom-right corner of the screen and click the note that appears. Quick Notes are saved in the Quick Notes folder of the Notes app. ### Is there a Microsoft Sticky Notes app for Mac? Microsoft doesn’t list one. Its support page names Windows, OneNote on iPhone, iPad and Android, Outlook and the web. On a Mac, sign in at onenote.com/stickynotes in a browser to see and edit your Microsoft sticky notes. ### Where does Stickies save notes on a Mac? Stickies saves notes automatically inside its own container in your user Library, at ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Stickies/Data/Library/Stickies. Back up that folder, or export each note as text, before you wipe or replace a Mac.