Trash & Recovery

When you delete a note, it goes to the trash, not gone forever. You can restore it anytime.

Deleting a Note

Click the Delete button (X) in a note's header. A confirmation dialog asks if you're sure, with the option to cancel.

Empty notes skip the confirmation and go straight to trash. A note counts as empty only when every one of its pages is empty and you haven't given the note a title (a page you've named counts as non-empty too, even before you type into it) so a multi-page note still asks even if the page you happen to be looking at is blank
Notes with reminders always ask for confirmation and warn you that the reminder will be deleted too
Multi-page notes say how many pages go to the trash with the note
You can turn off the confirmation dialog in Menu > Settings: but it always appears for notes with reminders, just to be safe

Closing a Page

Closing a page of a multi-page note sends it to the trash too, with the same confirmation. It comes back as its own note rather than as a page of the note it came from. Completely empty pages close without a trash entry.

Opening the Trash

Open the hub's Menu and click View Trash. The dialog title shows how many notes are in the trash.

The Trash dialog with deleted notes

Each deleted note shows:

A preview of its content: from the first page that has anything on it, so a note deleted while showing a blank tab is still recognizable
How many pages it has, if it has more than one ("Groceries · 3 pages")
"closed page" instead, if the entry is a single page you closed rather than a whole note
How long ago it was deleted (e.g., "3 hours ago", "2 days ago")
Hover over a note to see a longer preview in a tooltip

Notes are sorted newest first. The note you just deleted appears at the top.

Restoring a Note

Select a note in the trash and click Restore. The note reappears on your desktop with all its content, colors, and settings intact.

You can select multiple notes at once (hold Ctrl and click, or Shift+Click for a range) and restore them all together. The button shows how many you've selected: "Restore (3)".

Reminders

When you delete a note, its reminder is removed permanently. Restoring the note brings back the content but not the reminder. You'll need to set a new one.

Permanently Deleting a Note

Select a note in the trash and click Delete Forever. This is permanent and can't be undone.

Any images or screenshots attached to the note are also deleted from your computer at this point.

Emptying the Trash

Click Empty Trash at the top of the dialog to permanently delete everything in the trash at once. A confirmation dialog shows the count before proceeding.

How Long Are Deleted Notes Kept?

BetterStickies keeps up to 300 deleted notes. If you go over that, the oldest ones are automatically removed to make room. For most people, this is more than enough.

Free Version

The trash works the same in the free version. The only difference: you can't restore a note unless it fits within the free limit of 4 notes (tabs count toward the limit, a multi-tab note needs one free slot per tab). Delete or trash an active note, or close a tab, to make room.