Better Stickies 1.4: A Notes Browser, Sound Clips, a Fresh Look, and macOS

Better Stickies 1.4 is the biggest update since 1.0. Search becomes a notes browser with a live preview, notes gain lists, highlighting, colored code and sound clips, every window gets a fresh look, and notes are now saved one file per note with a daily backup. And for the first time, Better Stickies runs on the Mac.

It is the first public release since 1.2.1, and it is free to download for Windows, Linux and macOS. Here is what is new.

Search Is Now a Notes Browser

The Search window lists every note as a card: its color, its title, when it was last edited, its first two lines, and badges for pages, reminders, locked and hidden notes. Beside the list, a live preview shows the selected note in its own colors, with its lists, pictures, file shortcuts and sound clips. A hidden note can be read right there, without putting it back on the desktop, and text can be copied straight from the preview.

From the preview you can rename a note, hide or show it, lock it, open its settings, export it, or delete it, all without leaving Search. The All, Visible and Hidden filters show how many notes match in each, the sort button orders the list by Modified, Created or Title, and notes whose name matches come first. Export… saves just the selected note as text, Markdown or JSON. More in the Search guide.

Lists, Highlighting and Colored Code

The footer's list button now makes bullet and numbered lists as well as checklists. A plain click applies the type you used last; hold the button or right-click it to pick another. Tab and Shift+Tab nest items, and nested numbers go 1., a., i. like a word processor. Typing - , * or 1. at the start of a line starts a list.

A new highlight button paints a background color behind text, in six colors (Ctrl+Shift+L). Ctrl+U underlines, and the align button (Ctrl+E) moves a line to the center, then the right, then back. Code blocks now color their comments, strings, numbers and keywords for many common languages, in shades that stay readable on any note color. See Text Formatting.

Sound Clips in Notes

Drop a sound file onto a note (MP3, WAV, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis or Opus), or copy it in your file manager and paste it, and it becomes a clip with a play badge showing its length. Click it to play it inside the note, with pause, seek and stop. A page holding several clips gets previous and next buttons and can play them one after another.

The app keeps its own copy of clips up to 50 MB, so a clip survives moving or deleting the original; a larger file stays linked to where it is. In the Snap and Arch builds, clips open in the default player for now. See File Shortcuts.

A Fresh Look

Trash and Reminders now show notes as cards, like Search. On Windows, Search, Settings and the other dialogs follow the accent color picked in Personalization. Links, buttons and check boxes are easier to read in both themes, and a note's own buttons light up in the note's text color instead of a fixed blue.

Settings is regrouped into two tabs, General and Notes, and Note Settings applies every change as you make it. The app has a new icon, three fanned sticky notes forming a "B", and from December 5 to January 8 it wears a winter hat and scarf.

Better Stickies on the Mac

Better Stickies now runs on Apple Silicon Macs with macOS 15 Sequoia or later. It comes as a signed and notarized .dmg download, so it opens without a Gatekeeper warning, with the same features, the same free version and the same price as on Windows and Linux.

It is built for the Mac's desktop. Notes appear on every Space, and the app lives in the Dock rather than the menu bar: a due reminder badges its Dock icon. System-wide shortcuts work out of the box, with no Accessibility permission to grant: ⌃⌥N for a new note, ⌃⌥S to search, ⌃⌥H to hide or show notes, and ⌃⌥V to turn the clipboard into a note. In the app, Ctrl shortcuts use the ⌘ key, as Keyboard Shortcuts explains. There is no Mac App Store listing yet, and no build for Intel Macs.

But That's Not All

Safer saving. Each note is saved in its own file, and only the notes you change are written. A damaged file costs one note instead of all of them, and once a day a copy of every note goes to a backups folder that keeps the last seven days.
Start when you log in. On Linux and in the Windows download, a new Settings checkbox adds Better Stickies to your startup applications. Off by default.
The pin is now Lock. The header's padlock locks a note against moving, resizing and editing.
Pictures appear the moment you drop or paste them, and one click opens an image full size.
Ctrl+W hides the note you are typing in, and Search gains Ctrl+W to close and Ctrl+F to jump to the search box.
Polish. The app now speaks Polish, chosen automatically on a Polish system.
Help gains a What's New tab, and the AppImage starts on Ubuntu and Debian without installing anything first.

The release also carries a long round of fixes, from saving at quit to notes on a second monitor after sleep. The full list is on the changelog.

Before You Update

1.4 converts the old notes file into one file per note the first time it starts, and keeps the old files beside the data as a backup. If you sync the data folder between computers, update every computer that shares it before using the app there again, and use one computer at a time. Version 1.2 can't read the new folder: the Backing Up Your Notes guide explains how to get notes back in 1.2 if you ever need to go back.

How to Get Better Stickies 1.4

Free version: download it for Windows, Linux or macOS from betterstickies.com/download or the GitHub releases page. It is the same app with a 4-note limit, with no signup and no time limit.
Premium: sign in at betterstickies.com and download 1.4 from your account. Premium is a one-time purchase that removes the note limit.
Stores: the Microsoft Store and Snap Store builds update as each store approves them.

Questions, ideas or a bug to report? Join the Discord or r/BetterStickies. And if Better Stickies helps you, a star on GitHub helps other people find it.