Keep Sticky Notes on Your Mac Desktop
How to keep sticky notes on the Mac desktop and stay organised: fold them, set where they sit, arrange and stack them, and capture a thought from any app.
Sanjeev Maharjan6 min read
The way to keep sticky notes on a Mac desktop without drowning in them is to give each one a short title, fold the ones you are not using, choose where they sit in relation to your other windows, and let Arrange or Stack tidy the pile. PixoNotes does all of this with real windows on the desktop, and a quick capture box that works from any app.
⌃⌥N from any app to write a note, add it as a sticky, fold what you are not reading, then use Arrange or Stack when the desktop gets busy. Closing a sticky never deletes the note.What a sticky is in PixoNotes
A sticky is a small window on your desktop. It appears on every Space, you can resize it, and PixoNotes remembers where you left it and how big it was on that Mac. There are eight colours in the spirit of classic paper stickies: yellow, orange, pink, purple, blue, teal, green and grey. The paper stays bright in both light and dark mode, with dark writing on top.
Every sticky is also a note. Any note on your kanban board can sit on the desktop as a sticky, and any sticky can be shown on the board. It is one thing in two places, so you never copy a note from one to the other. If you close a sticky with the cross, it only comes off the desktop. The note stays on its board, and deleting it is a separate step.
A new blank sticky is ready to type in straight away, and you can click anywhere on the paper to put the caret there. The bottom bar gives you bold, italic, a checklist, a code block and copy, so a sticky can hold more than a phone number. For longer writing, see the scratchpad guide.
Capture a thought without leaving your app
Stickies are only useful if making one is quicker than forgetting. Press ⌃⌥N from any app and a small box opens in the middle of the screen. Type, press Return, and it closes and hands the keyboard back to the app you were in. Press ⌘Return instead to add the text as a sticky, Option-Return for a new line, and Esc to cancel. This shortcut needs no special permissions, and you can turn it off in Settings if you prefer.
The same box is also a search. As you type, matching notes appear below it, so you find out whether you already wrote something before you write it twice.
Shortcuts you can type on the first line
You can set things up as you write, with short words on the first line. A word only counts if it names something real, so a line such as "#1 priority" stays exactly as you typed it. A line under the box tells you what it understood.
| Type | What it does |
|---|---|
#orange | Sets the colour, any of the eight |
@doing | Sends the note to that column |
+money | Adds a label |
!p1 | Sets the priority (p1, p2 or p3) |
due:fri | Sets a due date (also today, tomorrow or a full date) |
!sticky | Puts the note on the desktop |
You can reach the same capture box from the menu bar icon, which also lists your recent notes and lets you drop text onto it to make a note.
Title, fold and stay on top
Three small habits keep a desktop readable.
- Let the title do the work. A sticky takes its title from the first line, and a blank one shows when it was made. If you want your own, double-click the title and type up to 80 characters. The title is separate from the note, and Use Automatic Title in the menu brings the first line back.
- Fold what you are not reading. The arrow at the top left rolls a sticky up into a slim bar that shows only its title. Unfold it when you need it. A column of folded stickies takes very little room and you can still read every title.
- Choose where it sits. From the menu on a sticky you can pick Always on Top, With Other Windows or Behind Windows. A shopping list can sit behind your work, while the one thing you must not forget stays on top.
When you hover over a sticky, a palette lets you change its colour and the menu holds the rest, including Show on Board. Colour is a good way to sort: pick one colour for work, another for home, and you can filter by it later.
Arrange, stack and the wall of stickies
When there are many stickies, the On the Desktop tab shows all of them as equal tiles in their real colours. You can filter by colour, sort by newest or by colour, and click a tile to bring that sticky forward, unfolded and ready to type, even if it was hidden or behind other windows.
- Fold All and Unfold All roll the whole desktop up or open it again.
- Arrange lays the stickies out from the top right of one screen. When they cannot all fit, rows overlap, and every title still shows. Arrange by Colour groups them by colour.
- Stack piles every sticky at the top right so they read like one note, with each title showing and the last on top. Stack by Colour does the same in colour order.
- Hide All and Show All clear the desktop for a meeting and bring it back after. You can also toggle every sticky from anywhere with
⌃⌥S. - All on Top, All with Other Windows and All on Bottom set where every sticky sits in one go.
The same list is in the menu on a sticky, in the right-click menu on a sticky's title bar, in the menu bar drop-down and in the View menu. Moving a sticky is not editing a note, so rearranging never changes what a note says, and positions are never synced to your other Macs.
How many stickies you can keep
The free plan lets you keep 5 stickies on the desktop at once, along with notes, code, every copy format and 2 boards. That is enough to try the habit properly. Pro adds more stickies, more boards, sync, Apple Intelligence and text tools, at $2.99 a month or $19.90 a year. Going back to the free plan hides nothing you wrote. See the pricing page for the details and the features page for the full list.
PixoNotes needs macOS 26 or later on an Apple Silicon Mac. You can find the current version and requirements on the download page.
Questions people ask
Does closing a sticky delete the note?
No. The cross only takes the sticky off the desktop, and the note stays on its board. Deleting is a separate action, and deleted notes wait in Recently Deleted for 30 days before they go.
Can I keep stickies behind my other windows?
Yes. Each sticky can sit on top of everything, with your other windows, or behind them. You can set this for one sticky from its menu, or for all of them at once from the All Stickies actions.
How do I add a sticky without opening the app?
Press ⌃⌥N in any app, type your note and press ⌘Return. The text becomes a sticky on the desktop, and the keyboard goes back to the app you were using.
Do stickies work on more than one Mac?
The notes can sync between Macs with Pro, through a folder you own, such as iCloud Drive. Where a sticky sits and how big it is stays with each Mac.
Written by Sanjeev Maharjan
Sanjeev Maharjan builds PixoNotes, stickies, a board and a scratchpad for the Mac. Found a mistake in this guide? Write to [email protected].