The 17 Best Sticky Notes Alternatives for Windows in 2022

Post-its on your desktop or Start Screen can be extremely helpful for memorizing minor but important amounts of information. Stop cluttering up your desk and go digital with fantastic sticky note apps. Sticky Notes has been part of Microsoft Windows OS for a long time, and many have been using it as a note-taking app.

Everyone uses sticky notepads in different ways. For some, it acts as a notepad for pinning down their tasks of the day. For others, it’s a place to write down their fleeting ideas. However, with Sticky Notes gone from Windows 10, many are looking for an alternative that is simple to use and one that actually works. You won’t believe it, but Sticky Notes haven’t received any single update over the past few years.

Here are the 17 Best Sticky Notes Alternatives for Windows in 2022 which are free or have an affordable premium plan. These note-taking apps not only make your life easier, but they also make your screen look nice and organized.

1. Microsoft Sticky Notes

Pricing: Free

Since Microsoft killed the original Sticky Notes, it has brought a more advanced and feature-rich alternative called Microsoft Sticky Notes on Windows 10.

It appears on the desktop and does not stay on top of all windows which is disappointing. However, you can bring the pin functionality through a third-party app.

You can follow our article and learn how to keep a window appear on top. Apart from that, you can quickly add your tasks and reminders. The great part is that it now offers cross-device syncing which can be accessed from OneNote Mobile, Microsoft Launcher, and Outlook.

What I like more is that it has multiple text formatting options including bulleted points, strikethrough, and more. Having said all of that, the highlight of Microsoft Sticky Notes is that it offers smart insights based on your input.

For example, if you add an address to Sticky Notes then it offers a clickable link to open the place on the Map.

That’s cool, right? Summing up, while Microsoft Sticky Notes is surely advanced, the lack of stay-on-top feature is an elementary mistake which the company should have fixed long back.

2. 7 Sticky Notes

Pricing: Free

This full-featured solution offers plenty of options for formatting your notes and the text within them. After the installation, an icon will appear in your notification tray (the area in the bottom-right corner of your desktop). Right-clicking on this icon will give you the option to open a new note.

Each note has a title and text body, as shown above. When you open a new note, the Note Configuration Window will appear beside it. This allows you to change the color of the note, the font, font size, font color, etc. There’s also an option to set alarms. You can set certain notes to shake when you wake up your computer, to play a noise at a certain time, or to open a certain program at a given time.

It’s a good way to ensure that your notes get your attention. When you’re done configuring all the options for any given note, you can click the green arrow to save your changes or the red X to discard them. If you ever need to reopen the Note Configuration Window, double-click on the header of the note.

Right-clicking on any note gives you an abundance of options to work with. If you’re juggling a bunch of notes on your desktop, these can be extremely helpful because you can arrange them alphabetically, roll them up (so only the header shows), or choose which notes display in front and back. If you right-click on the icon in your notification tray, you’ll find the Notes Manager.

This view will give you an organizable overview of all your notes, which is a super helpful tool if your desktop is flooded with them.

3. Zoho Notebook

Pricing: Free

Zoho Notebook offers every feature we discussed above, and then some more. It is available on every platform you could think of.

You can create notebooks to store notes. You can change the appearance and customize them to your liking. Creating different types of notes is easy, and setting reminders is easier. Advanced features include gesture support, tags, passcode, and fingerprint security, version history, and free unlimited cloud storage.

What else could you ask for? Zoho Notebook is a powerful Sticky Notes alternative that’s platform agnostic. The team behind Zoho Notebook is also very active and keeps adding new features. While they say that the app will always remain free, they do have other apps in their suite.

That’s how they make money. That’s how they can offer Notebook as a free product.

4. Tomboy

Pricing: Free

Tomboy is a desktop note-taking application for Linux, Unix, Windows, and Mac OS X.

Simple and easy to use, but with potential to help you organize the ideas and information you deal with every day.

  • Highlighting text
  • Auto-linking web & email addresses
  • Font styling & sizing
  • Note synchronization across several computers
  • Backup and Recovery
  • Inline spell checking
  • Undo/redo
  • Bulleted lists

5. StickyPad

Pricing: Free

StickyPad is a free program that allows you to make floating notes on your desktop or on top of other windows.

The opacity of the notes can be adjusted in StickyPad. StickyPad allows you to adjust the opacity of the notes, and its “Translucent notes” feature allows you to continue working while the notes remain on your screen at all times.

You can also save and print your notes with StickyPad. Another intriguing feature is the ability to program a hotkey that, when pressed, launches StickyPad in note-taking mode.

You don’t need to use your mouse to navigate; simply press the hotkey and type your notes.

6. SaMotion

Pricing: Free

SaMotion is a simple to use, yet powerful tool to manage your tasks so you only focus on what is really needed.

The docking feature allows you to use the tool in many situations. A few examples would be: As a private movie and series list, your projects or even for your real work. In addition SaMotion offers great protection of your data, by encrypting everything with Blowfish 448 Bit.

You can export your graph as PDF and the project files and the executable are fully portable.

7. Simple Sticky Notes

Pricing: Free

Simple Sticky Notes is another alternative to Sticky Notes that is clean, lightweight, and powerful. It offers the option to keep your tasks appear on top of all windows which is great.

So you can continue browsing the web and add tasks as you go forward. You can also drag and drop texts directly on the sticky note which is great. The only con is that it does not support images which I think is passable.

Other than that, you can edit the title, change colors, adjust opacity, share notes via email, and more. All in all, I would say, Simply Stick Notes is the perfect alternative to the original Sticky Notes on Windows 10 that just works without any fuss.

8. Notezilla

Pricing: Free and Premium subscription

The Notezilla app is similar to Sticky Notes in its design. However, what differentiates Notezilla from other apps on this list is its cloud connectivity feature.

Through this, you access your notes right from your phone. The app offers multiple design skins that can ward off any monotony that you might develop in an otherwise minimalist app.

It can even act as a replacement for the Notepad app, as the app can get as wide as your Windows screen itself.

There’s also a feature to attach your notes to Microsoft Word documents or other Windows files. The app is available for free. And if you go on to develop a liking for the app, you can also get the paid version with either a one-year subscription at $19.95 or a lifetime one-off purchase at $29.95.

9. Google Keep

Pricing: Free

While you can transfer notes created in Stickies from one PC to another, it’s not the same as the cloud sync feature that other note-taking apps offer.

That’s why I recommend Google Keep, which was inspired from sticky notes. It is a quick and simple way to create colorful notes on the web, Windows 10, Android and iOS. You can create a text, image, to-do, and even voice notes in Keep.

It comes with OCR that allows you to grab the text in images and even search for them. Keep will automatically transcribe your audio notes to text and attach it for your perusal. You can set time or location-based reminders, and finding old notes is easy with Google’s famed search prowess.

Finally, you can invite friends to collaborate on a single note in real-time. Check our compilation of Google Keep tricks to start using it like a pro. You can install Keep on Windows 10 as well as on your Chrome browser as an extension.

10. To-Do DeskList

Pricing: Free

To-Do DeskList is one of the best and simple to use Sticky Notes alternatives for Windows 10 computers.

The tool is known for its simplicity and effectiveness. Once installed, the tool appears as an icon in the system tray.

You can use the system tray icon to create a new task or create a new note. You can even assign task priority levels with To-Do DeskList. The program lets you set each task’s priority level, add detailed notes, and set an alert if desired.

Each task then sticks to the desktop. You can specify which corner you prefer displayed as a translucent rectangle that the program refers to as a leaf. The program’s built-in Help file is thorough and more or less makes sense, although it’s not the best use of the English language we’ve ever seen.

11. ZenR Notes

Pricing: Free

The ZenR Notes is not really a sticky notes app, but if you’re searching for some security, then this might be it.

ZenR Notes is a password-protected note-taking program that encrypts and securely stores all of your notes.

The app has a compact form factor and allows you to make notes on the go. Text, photographs, and lists can all be used in the notes, and formatting is also supported.

If your passwords are forgotten, ZenR Notes supports password recovery via email.

Pros:

  • Notes can be created on the fly. The application lets you protect them with a password. It is also possible to set up reminders for individual notes.

Cons:

  • The application doesn’t work on Windows 7 or earlier versions.

12. PNotes

Pricing: Free

PNotes is light-weight, flexible, skinnable manager of virtual notes on your desktop.

It supports multiple languages, individual note’s settings, transparency and scheduling. Absolutely portable as well – no traces in registry. PNotes.NET edition requires .NET framework 4 Client Profile.

Key Features:

  • Portability (PNotes does not require installation, it can be started from any drive (fixed or flash) and leaves no traces on host computer after finishing)
  • Internationalization (PNotes is available in about 40 languages)
  • Security (password protection on program level, group level or single note level, backing up and synchronization)
  • Flexible organization (Control Panel, groups of notes, special groups – like Diary and more)
  • Unlimited formatting abilities, skins, scheduling, text-to-speech

13. Stickies

Pricing: Free

Stickies is another advanced alternative to Sticky Notes that comes with always-on-top feature and the ability to create new sticky notes with a simple keyboard shortcut.

It has multiple hotkeys for creation, deletion, hiding notes, pasting directly from the clipboard, and more. You can even customize the hotkeys according to your preference. Apart from that, you can create alarms for your tasks, create a network of friends for sharing notes, define skin color, and much more, In fact, it has so many features that you might get overwhelmed.

Having said that, it works flawlessly out of the box without having to tweak the settings.

So Stickies can be used by both pro and general users who are on the lookout for a simple yet powerful Sticky Notes alternative.

14. Sticky Notes 8

Pricing: Free

One of the most popular options out there, Sticky Notes 8 is a must-see.

You can choose between a few colors of notes, but there’s nowhere near the customizability as some of the desktop apps for font size, color, etc. For some reason, all modern apps lag behind desktop apps in terms of features. Ads are displayed within this free app (that is what the gray note above is), but they can be removed for $1.50.

Since ads can be moved out of the way, and you can even place other notes over top of them, they’re not such a big deal. The Live Tiles that display a given note come in three sizes: small, medium, and wide. The wide view is shown below, while the medium is about half that and really can’t show much text.

The small view is even worse, not displaying any text at all. You’ll definitely want to go for the wide, and even then, keep your notes brief. The biggest standout feature here is built-in syncing with OneDrive (which is a fantastic app for backing up everything on Windows 8). If you want to ensure that your notes are backed up, this is the solution for you.

15. Hott Notes

Pricing: Free

By default, you can create notes with that particular day’s date as a title. You may change it to something else later.

Like other Sticky Notes alternatives for Windows 10 mentioned before, you can change the font type, color, and theme of the notes.

You can also set reminders and all the notes are easily manageable using the note manager. One cool feature is the ability to use the Stylus to scribble or draw inside notes. Another nice addition is the wastebasket. That is where all your deleted notes go so you can restore them later if need be.

16. GloboNote

Pricing: Free

GloboNote is a free and easy to use desktop note taking application.

It lets you create sticky notes, to-do lists, journals, reminders and other notes in one place.

There are no limits to the number of sticky notes you can create. Notes can be organize by groups and search using the search tool. GloboNote can be run in any OS that has Java 8 installed.

Key Features:

  • Platform Independent. Run on any OS that has Java 8 or higher installed
  • Create checklist. Insert checkboxes on note (Ctrl-Shift-C to create checkbox)
  • Organize notes in group. Display/Hide notes according to group
  • Find/Replace the content of the note
  • Support for rich text editing with bold, italic, colour etc
  • Adjust transparency level of inactive note
  • Set Alarms. Remind yourself of important events. Set recurring alarm, play custom sound(*.wav, *.aiff or *.mp3)
  • Build-in Calculator. Enter the calculation in the note then press F2
  • Customize notes. Change color, font, behavior of your note
  • Make note to always stay on top of other window
  • Roll Up/Down note with a single click

17. Sticky Tiles

Pricing: Free

Don’t let the incredibly similar name fool you; sticky Tiles (with an “s”) is a much better app than the Sticky Tile (without an “s”), a bare-bones app that will only leave you frustrated.

Sticky Tiles doesn’t have any interface for viewing all your notes and is instead focused entirely on the Live Tile. When you open the app, you’re immediately prompted to give a title and information for the Live Tile, choose the color, choose the style, and then pin it.

It has the same three sizes as the others—small, medium, and wide—and you’ll run into the same problem of limited space for text here. Tapping on the Live Tile will open the note up for editing, without allowing you to create additional notes or view multiple at a time. It’s not great for those who want to juggle dozens of notes, but for keeping a single pertinent note on your Start Screen, it’s probably your best bet.

Conclusion

That’s pretty much it! So, there are Best Sticky Notes Alternatives for Windows.

If you have any other favorite Best Sticky Notes Alternatives for Windows then don’t forget to share them with us in the comment below. Also, if you liked this article, Share on your favorite Social media platform.

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