Getting Started

BetterStickies puts sticky notes on your desktop, quick notes you can see at a glance without opening an app.

To download it for Windows, a Mac or Linux, and later to update or uninstall it, see Installing BetterStickies.

First Launch

The first time you open BetterStickies, it greets you with one note titled Welcome, with the cursor ready in it. The note shows what BetterStickies can do beyond a plain sticky note, as a checklist to try: paste a screenshot, link or code; drop files, pictures or sound clips; give each note its own color, picture and transparency; hold Ctrl (⌘ on a Mac) and scroll to resize the text; add pages; set a reminder; search every note; and start a new note, with your new-note shortcut where it works, or the hub's +. Tick each item as you go. It's an ordinary note, so edit it, keep it or delete it whenever you like.

More tips are in Help, in the hub's Menu (on a Mac, also in the menu bar's Help menu). Help has three tabs: Welcome, What's New (what changed in the version you are running) and Features & Hidden Powers. It doesn't count as a note.

The Help window on its Welcome tab

The Hub

A small floating bar appears on your desktop. This is the hub, your home base for managing notes.

The hub bar: note count and name above the five buttons (new note, search, reminders, menu, hide)

Button	What it does
+	Create a new note
Search	Find any note by typing
Bell	See all your reminders
Menu	Settings, export, trash, help, about, and more
Hide	Minimize the hub to the system tray

You can drag the hub anywhere on your screen. To bring it back after hiding, click the BetterStickies icon in your system tray, or simply start the app again, which hands off to the copy already running and brings its hub up.

Hiding the hub normally lasts until you quit. If you'd rather it stay out of the way for good, turn on Start with the hub hidden in ☰ Menu → Settings… → General, in the Startup section. The app then launches straight to the tray. This is most useful together with Start Better Stickies when I log in, the switch right above it: turn both on and the app is simply always there in the background, reminders included, without you having to start it. The login switch shows what your system currently has set, so if you turn it off in your desktop's own startup settings instead, Settings will show that the next time you open it. (It isn't available yet in the Flatpak and Microsoft Store versions; there the switch is greyed out and its tooltip says so.) Your notes still open normally; only the hub bar is hidden. The option is greyed out if your desktop has no system tray, since the tray icon would be the only easy way to get the hub back. (Starting the app again also brings the hub back, but that only helps if you think of trying it.)

Creating a Note

Click the + button on the hub. A new sticky note appears, ready for typing.

A fresh empty note

You can also press Ctrl+Alt+N. This works even when BetterStickies isn't focused. On Windows it works right away; on Linux it needs a one-time setup in your desktop's own keyboard settings (see Global Shortcuts on Linux). On a Mac it is ⌃⌥N (Control-Option-N) and works right away too.

Parts of a Note

Each note has three areas:

Header

The bar at the top. It shows the creation date, or a custom title if you set one. Double-click the date to type your own. Hover over a note to reveal the header buttons:

Collapse: shrink the note down to just the title bar
Settings: change this note's font, color, size, and background
Delete: move the note to trash
Lock: lock the note in place and make it read-only. Click it again to unlock
Always on top: keep the note above other windows
Hide: hide this note (it's not deleted, just invisible)

A crown in the header means the note is read-only for now. Click it to see why and how to get editing back.

Content Area

Where you type. You can format text, build checklists, paste images, drop files, and split a note into tabs.

Footer

The bar at the bottom. Its buttons sit in four small groups: titles; bold, italic and text color; lists (checkbox, bullet or numbered) and alignment; reminders and adding a page. At the usual note width they fit on one row; when the note is narrower, the footer takes two, and a group always stays together on one of them. Every button has a keyboard shortcut; the list and color buttons also open a chooser when you hold them or click the ▾ in their corner. See Text Formatting and Keyboard Shortcuts.

Strikethrough, highlight, links and code blocks are in the selection toolbar, which appears above the text when you select it with the mouse. See Text Formatting › Selection Toolbar.

The footer shows while you're working in a note and gets out of the way while you're actually writing: it sits over the last line, so it stands down the moment you type and comes straight back when you move the mouse. Clicking away to another window hides it too.

Moving and Resizing

Move: drag the header bar or the edges of the note
Resize: drag any corner
Collapse: double-click the header bar to shrink the note to its title bar; double-click again to expand
Zoom text: hold Ctrl and scroll the mouse wheel

Hiding and Showing Notes

Sometimes you want notes out of the way without deleting them:

Hide all notes: open the hub's Menu and click Hide All Notes
Show all notes: the same menu item changes to Show All Notes with a count of how many are hidden
Hide one note: click the Hide button in that note's header
Find a hidden note: use Search and pick Hidden to list only your hidden notes. Opening a note from search makes it visible again

Where to Go Next

To learn about	Read
Bold, headings, checklists, code blocks, links	Text Formatting
Splitting one note into several pages	Note Tabs
Pasting screenshots, code, web pages, and Markdown	Pasting Content
Colors, fonts, backgrounds, and grid snapping	Customizing Your Notes
Getting notified about a note	Reminders
Finding a note again	Search
Restoring something you deleted	Trash & Recovery
Every keyboard shortcut	Keyboard Shortcuts
What the free version includes	Free & Premium

Two Things Worth Knowing Early

Hover for help. Most buttons, settings, and options have tooltips, including the hub buttons, the note header buttons, and the date in a note's header. If you're not sure what something does, hover over it.
The right-click menu adapts. Right-click inside a note for cut, copy, paste, undo, redo and Insert Link…, plus extras for whatever is under your cursor. Right-click a link for link options, or an image to change its size.

System Tray

BetterStickies lives in your system tray (the small icons near your clock). Clicking the tray icon toggles the hub, and double-clicking always brings it up. Right-click it to show or hide the hub, create a note, show or hide all notes, open search or settings, or exit. The top of that menu lists the five notes you edited most recently, hidden ones marked "(hidden)"; click one to bring that note to the front, even when it was hidden or collapsed. Your other notes are a search away under Search Notes. While a window such as Settings or Search Notes is open, the entries that open another window are greyed out until you close it.

On a Mac there is no tray icon: click the Dock icon to bring the hub back or put it away, and right-click it for the same menu, your five latest notes on top.

If you've turned on Start with the hub hidden (see The Hub above), the tray icon is how you reach the hub each session. Starting the app again works too, and brings the hub up without opening a second copy.

Auto-Save

Everything saves as you type. No save button needed. BetterStickies also keeps automatic backups in case anything goes wrong. See Backing Up Your Notes.

About & Updates

Open Menu > About from the hub to see your version, check for updates, find community links (Discord, Reddit, GitHub), support development, or open Third-Party Licenses to read the licenses of the components the app includes.