Sticky Notes is Microsoft’s note app for the Windows desktop. It puts quick notes on the screen as small, colored windows. This gives you a simple way to save something you need to remember for later. Using it requires no account. If you sign in with a Microsoft account, the same notes also appear on your phone, on the web and in Outlook.
The notes list and individual notes
Sticky Notes has two kinds of window. The notes list holds every note, newest first, and the note you edited most recently moves to the top. You can’t reorder the list by hand. Opening a note from the list places it on the desktop as its own window. Drag its top bar to move it and its edges to resize it. Sticky Notes remembers each note’s position.
A new note starts from the plus icon or Ctrl+N. Closing a note with the X saves it automatically and does not delete it. You can’t set notes to stay on top of other windows.
Typing, handwriting and pictures
You can type a note with the keyboard. On a touch device you can also write or sketch with a finger or a digital pen. The camera icon inside a note attaches a picture from your files. You remove it with the “Delete image” command.
Formatting is deliberately limited. You can make selected text bold, italic, underlined or struck through, and turn a paragraph into a bulleted list. Each style is available from buttons at the bottom of the note or from shortcuts such as Ctrl+B and Ctrl+Shift+L. Applying a style a second time removes it. You can’t change the font or text size.
Colors, dark mode and Insights
The ellipsis menu on each note sets its background color. In the app settings you can choose light mode, dark mode or the current Windows mode. This setting changes the note and list backgrounds and the text, but not the colored header strip of each note.
Insights is an optional setting that looks for dates, times, phone numbers and addresses in a note. When it finds one, it offers a related action. Examples include adding a reminder to the Outlook calendar for a time or showing an address on a map.
Finding and deleting notes
The search box at the top of the notes list, also opened with Ctrl+F, filters the list to the notes that contain your search term.
You can delete a note from its own ellipsis menu, from the list, or with Ctrl+D. You can’t recover deleted notes or undo the action. Turning on “Confirm before deleting” in the settings adds a prompt to guard against deleting a note by mistake.
Notes on phones, the web and Outlook
Once you sign in to Sticky Notes from the settings in the notes list, your notes sync to the Microsoft account. On iPhone and Android they appear in the Sticky Notes section of the OneNote app. On Android, Microsoft Launcher can also show them in its feed. In a browser they are available on the OneNote Sticky Notes web page, and they also appear in Outlook. Edits and color changes on one device carry over to the others.
Keyboard and screen reader access
You can use Sticky Notes with the keyboard for all essential basic tasks. Shortcuts cover moving between the list and open notes, closing and deleting notes, and editing text. The app also supports screen readers, including Windows Narrator.
