v1.0.0
OpenStickies is now BetterStickies
A note on the name change
This release started as OpenStickies v3. It is shipping instead as BetterStickies v1.0.0.
I changed the name because OpenStickies kept leading some people to think the app was open source. That was never the intent, and I never wanted the name to imply something the project was not. But if the confusion keeps happening, it is my job to clean it up. BetterStickies is clearer, closer to how apps are usually named, and removes the ambiguity.
The rebrand touched more than I expected: config paths, packaging, store listings, the website, GitHub repo, payment provider, Discord, logo, Buy Me a Coffee, email addresses, domains, and plenty of smaller things. It was not a fun migration, but it is the right foundation for the app going forward.
Your notes, settings, and reminders migrate automatically.
New
- Rich text paste — pasting from emails, web pages, and documents preserves bold, italic, links, lists, and highlights while normalizing fonts and sizes to match your note
- Markdown paste — pasting markdown text auto-converts headings, bold, italic, links, task lists, and code blocks into rich formatting
- Quick Capture (Ctrl+Alt+V) — global shortcut to create a new note pre-filled with whatever's on your clipboard (text, HTML, or screenshots)
- Show on all virtual desktops — notes automatically follow you across all desktops on Windows and KDE Plasma, no configuration needed
- Redesigned reminders — visual chips, quick presets (30min/1h/3h/Tomorrow 9AM), right-click to edit or remove, and a single grouped notification on launch shows all overdue reminders
- Reminder edit flow — new Edit button in the reminders dialog updates the reminder in place without deleting and recreating it
- Color-coded bell icon shows reminder status at a glance (green/orange/red); clicking it on a note with an existing reminder shows a management menu instead of the creation presets
- Ctrl+R opens the date/time picker directly — faster for keyboard users
- Clear Formatting (Ctrl+\) — strip all formatting from selected text back to the note's defaults
- Sync-safe data storage — notes and reminders now live in a dedicated data/ subfolder you can point Dropbox or OneDrive at without syncing machine-specific config
- Skip delete confirmation — optional setting to delete notes without the confirmation dialog
- Smart paste toast — brief notification after auto-detected pastes showing what happened and how to undo
- Structured logging — rotating log file and --verbose flag for troubleshooting
Changed
- Rebranded from OpenStickies to BetterStickies — new name, new icon, safe migration of existing config
- Hub redesign — dark glass background with drop shadow, high-contrast green text, visible note count shows only unhidden notes
- One reminder per note — each note supports exactly one active reminder; existing notes with multiple reminders are automatically migrated
- RTL direction is now note-level — toggling RTL switches the entire note at once, matching Windows Sticky Notes and Google Keep behavior
- KDE Activities — notes appear on all Plasma Activities automatically (no more per-note assignment menu)
- New notes no longer float above all windows by default
- Trash keeps up to 300 notes with no time limit (previously 100 notes with 30-day auto-delete)
- System tray notification only shows once on first hide instead of every time
- Payments now go through Lemon Squeezy, which adds more payment options for people in more countries.
- Premium users now get a golden app icon.
- The logo has been refreshed to feel more playful and closer to what the app is about.
Improved
- About dialog redesigned with clean SVG icons for links and a streamlined layout
- Faster startup — hidden notes defer content loading until shown
- Smoother typing — reduced per-keystroke work for RTL detection and reminder scanning
- Live preview sliders — opacity and line spacing update the note in real-time as you drag
- Note Settings dialog opens beside the note instead of covering it
- Search dialog shows 4 results instead of 3, sorts by last modified, and has a more compact layout
- Reminders dialog redesigned as a flat sorted list with colored status dots and sortable columns
- HiDPI toolbar icons render at native resolution on high-DPI displays
- Deleted notes show content preview on hover in the Trash dialog
- Notification sounds now work reliably in Snap and Flatpak sandboxes
Fixed
- Notes now pin correctly to all desktops on KDE Plasma 6.3+ and on non-English locales
- Pasting rich text with line breaks no longer lands as one giant paragraph
- Pressing Enter after a formatted checkbox line no longer carries bold/link formatting into the new line
- Clear Formatting no longer strips links — only visual formatting is removed
- Line spacing changes now apply to existing text and persist across restarts
- Closing a note from the taskbar no longer makes it disappear — it hides properly
- App no longer hangs on exit under GNOME/Wayland
- Code blocks update colors correctly when switching themes
- Restarting after a crash reclaims the D-Bus service without needing a reboot
- Wayland app identity fixed — taskbar icons, Alt+Tab grouping, and compositor rules now work regardless of how the app is launched
- "Modified" timestamp no longer updates from hide/show, drag, or pin actions — only real edits count
- RTL notes now restore their direction correctly when loaded from a hidden state
- Clearing all text in an auto-detected RTL note resets direction back to LTR for the next input
- Settings dialog no longer truncates labels at standard DPI or with longer translations
- Pasting into existing code blocks no longer creates extra line spacing gaps
- Hub window now shrinks correctly after hidden notes are removed
- Audio backend crash fixed on systems using Qt 6.11+ with the FFmpeg multimedia backend
- Object replacement characters (U+FFFC) no longer appear in note titles, search results, or exports
Removed
- Per-note "Show on All Desktops" toggle — notes always appear on all desktops now; the opt-out has been removed
- "Reset All Defaults" button from the Settings dialog