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Tricks for Mac Stickies

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Stickies, as the name suggests, is an application readily available on your Mac to let you stick your thoughts - in a form of small notes - on your Desktop.
Stickies reside inside Applications → Stickies.

Not only limited to making notes, but with Stickies you can also perform several tricks, such as embedding picture, scrolling down notes, making stickies translucent, and many other tricks.

Upon continuing reading this article, you will see several tricks for using Mac Stickies.

Embed Picture on Stickies

Embed Pictures on Stickies

To embed picture on your Stickies:

  1. Find your image file
  2. Drag and drop it into your stickies pane
  3. Adjust its position with Spacebar / Tab
  4. The picture is not resizable

Changing Stickies Color

Change Background Colors

You have several color selections for your Stickies background: Yellow, Blue, Green, Pink, Purple and Gray. To change your Stickies background to one of these colors:

  1. Go to Stickies menubar
  2. Click on Color
  3. Choose Your Preferred Color

However, it's too troublesome if everytime I need to go there to change my Stickies background color. Therefore, I customize the shortcuts and make it so much easier for me to change the background color.

Customized Color Shortcut

Here is how I customize the Stickies color shortcuts:

  1. Open System Preferences
  2. Select Keyboard & Mouse and go under Keyboard Shortcuts section
  3. Click on the [+] button near the bottom of the pane
  4. Upon seeing the pop up menu, select Stickies as application, choose menu title from one of the six different colors and assign keyboard shortcut to each of them

You don't need to relaunch Stickies for the changes to take effect.

Translucent Stickies

To make Stickies looks even cooler, you can make it translucent by using keystrokes Command-Option-T.

Translucent Stickies

Floating Stickies

Trigger Floating Mode: Command-Option-F

Floating Stickies is the type of Stickies that will always float on top of other windows. This is particularly useful if you have a really important notes, like reading UsingMac in a daily basis.

Switching Stickies

If you have more than one Stickies open at a time, keyboard shortcut Command-[~] can help you switch to other Stickies - it rotates through all Stickies.

Creating Stickies' List

List is always welcomed by most people. To insert list into your Stickies, press down Option-Tab and you will see a bullet appear on your Stickies.

Save Your Stickies

Unlike other types of documents, save button is not provided for Stickies. In order to save the stickies you've just created, you need to:

  1. Close the Stickies (Command-W)
  2. Upon seeing the dialog box, choose Save&hellip
  3. Select your destination and you're set

Get Stickies Info

Last but not least, you can always get the info of your Stickies by using your mouse to hover on the Stickies pane for a short duration.

Stickies Info

Here we've reached the end of this article. I hope this article can be useful to you. If you've any question or feedback regarding to this article, please feel free to drop a comment. Thanks.

Categories: Applications, Tips and Tricks
Tags: Stickies, Trick

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27 Comments

casper 

Is it possible to change the skin of the stickies (like Notes in Dashboard)?

Chewy 

You should include under "Save your stickies" that stickies are save automatically and "saving it" turns it into a .rtf file. This is the same as "exporting"

What about "importing"?

justin 

That is a sweet wallpaper, anyone know here I can get it?

Justin 

nvm I found it under wallpapers of the month.

Bueno a chuparce los dedos 

For everyone's convenience:

http://flickr.com/photos/andreaskoller/2163086771/sizes/o/

The wallpaper in the picture.
(Taken from Wallpaper of the Month Nov. 2008 - http://usingmac.com/2008/11/2/wallpapers-of-the-month-november-2008)

Chet 

this is a great stickies tip.
I only used to play around with the Dashboard notes widget.  I've almost forgotten the whole Stickies app.

Thanks!

David Chu 

I like another feature of Stickies: Collapse/Expand. You can choose it from Windows menu list or press Command-M.

r4z2 

I imported a .gif file into stickies a couple of years ago, and I need to use it now. Only problem is; if I drag it to my hard drive, it creates a clipping file. So how do I get the raw file on my hard drive instead of embedded in a stickie note?

Ron T 

I inadvertantly removed stickies with an older version and now it does not work anymore.
Can I get it back through the install cd or how can I get a most recent copy of it.
thank you,

Wendy 

You should be able to get back the new version from your Leopard installation disk.

Max 

OK I got you. Do you have any suggestion for transfer this stickies to Ipod Touch? It will be fantastic if we can sync note between ipod and mac. What do you think?

Wendy 

Oh, I only know that we can Export Text from our Stickies. I have never known about sync-ing Stickies between iPod and Mac. I agree with you however, it would be very useful if we can keep the same Stickies "everywhere".

GRAHAM 

Why when saving a Sticky does it do so as a plain text icon?? it doesn't look anything like the examples here on this article when looking at the desktop. If i want to read one it opens bloody text edit and thats all you can view it in. Please help.

Wendy 

Hi Graham, to open an RTFD file (format used by Stickies), you need to at first open your Stickies and go to File → Import Text… followed by choosing the file. This will open your file within Stickies.
I only know this way; I've tried to use Open With → Stickies but failed miserably.

J 

I don't get the dialogue box where you can choose to save stickies is there anyway to regain that option?

brian 

i lost stickies when i upgraded firefox. the app has a question mark and won't open. Upon searching, still have StickiesDatabase in library. Any suggestions?

ped 

Hey guys Each time i open the application i can't see anything. I know that all the stickies are there because i see the headlines in the window bar, but i just can't see anything; i restart the computer but nothing. Help please!!!

Ruth 

I did not find an answer to the Max' question on how to transfer stickies t the iPod touch - and how to transfer Notes from the iPod touch to the Mac other than by email. I never tried this out: can one open the screen or files of the iPod on the Mac? It would be great to drag and drop from and the to iPod. Thanks.

Somniloquist 

@Ped..


Hi.

Just to confirm, What you say is this - Stickies launches fine. When you click on Window at the top, it shows all stickie topic names but you do not see them on the scren. Is that so?.. 

If Yes,

Simple Shortcut -Go to System Preferences>Display - Take a Resolution 2 sizes above what is selected(Example). Then switch to the last one. This wil get all your windows back in the viewing area. 
Effective one - Click on Window, Select a Stickie. Click on Window again, Select Zoom. Repeat for all windows...

Heather Moss 

I am new to using MAC (converted from a PC). Here is my problem. Every time I left click with the mouse, a sticky pops up and starts writing a line. I was using InDesign and I can't use the mouse to draw anything because a sticky keeps popping up when I hold the left mouse button down and drag the mouse. Please help. I am extremely irritated with these stickies!

takenote88 

does anyone know how to customize the sticky color itself ( not the font)?
It would be great to have them match my iCal categories...

terry 

I delete the original text when first time open stickies by mistake. It was one yellow and one blue stickies with some text message. Where I get them back?
Thanks for help.

Yonden 

You have to go to the menubar on top. Click on "color", and you will get an option of colors to choose from.

Heinz 

Hi,
How can I save all Sticckies in one pdf-File or print in one List.

Thanx

savy 

how to download?

mac tricks 

stickies are great! thanks for the tips, i didn't realize some of that functionality existed

Ken Kastella 

How do you save stickies to a subdirectory?  For example, I made a sticky directory under Documents.  Documents/sticky does not show up.  I can save to Documents and then cut/paste into sticky but can't save there directly.

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