2 Free Desktop Note apps for Windows

July 28, 2020 / By

This used to be a list of my three favorite “notes” Apps, but one of them has bit the dust – so we’re down to two.

I was recently asked if there was a Windows equivalent to Apple’s Stickies. There are lots of them, but here are my favorite three two – A Note and Stickies.


Each of these is free, and certainly worthy of a donation if you find them useful. Both go above and beyond being “just notes”, and share similar features. They both work perfectly in Windows 10.

A Note

Homepage: http://a-note.sourceforge.net/

Features:

  • Synchronize
  • Alarm
  • Print
  • Email
  • Font
  • Note color
  • Autosave
  • Translucency
  • Stay on top (or not)
  • Dockable
  • Title
  • Import / Export
  • Translations to other languages (version 1.2)

    • Comments:

    A Note is the only of these three desktop note programs to be released under the GNU Public License, which in my mind makes it worthy of a donation if you use it.

    With 4 notes open (one with an alarm, transparency turned on for all 3), A Note used about 3MB of memory. Though synchronization isn’t something I tested, it seems very straight forward.

    Screenshots:

    example a note example a note alarm
    click to enlarge
       
    right click a note system tray icon dock your notes
       
    a note options
    click to enlarge    		 a note options 2
    click to enlarge

       
    a note options 3
    click to enlarge

    		a note options 4
    click to enlarge

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    Stickies

    Homepage: http://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/stickies/index.html

    Features:

  • Once on screen, stickies will remain where placed until closed, even through reboots
  • Stickies appearance can be customized; fonts, colours and buttons may be changed, and styles saved. Stickies can be resized.
  • Stickies can snap to each others edges to keep them lined up
  • Stickies can be transferred from one machine to another either over a TCP/IP network connection, or by using an SMTP mail server or MAPI client:
    1. Hierarchical friends list, which may be automatically transferred from other friends
    2. Play a sound file on receive
    3. Signature for transmitted or emailed stickies
    4. Favourite friends, and custom lists can be made
  • Stickies can be hidden for a certain period, until a specified date and time, or to wake every day, week or month, to act as reminders.
  • Stickies can have alarms set to ensure you notice them at a point you choose
  • Stickies can be transferred to and from your Palm or PPC PDA.
  • International language support
  • Stickies is small and simple, it writes to a single text file, and does not touch the registry

    • Comments:

    Talk about feature rich. What can’t this desktop note app do? The entire thing is customizable, and it even has Pocket PC and Palm synching. The transparency fade is nice eye candy. Stickies used about 4MB of memory while in use (3 notes, transparency turned on for all of them, one with an alarm). note: Stickies and Stickies for Windows with both install to C:\Program Files\Stickies\ by default. If you install both, make sure to change the installation location for one of them.

    Screenshots:

    example stickies note add an alarm
       
    right click the note right click the stickies system icon
       
    stickies options
    click to enlarge    		 stickies options 2
    click to enlarge
       
    stickies options 3
    click to enlarge    		 stickies options 4
    click to enlarge
       

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    1 thought on “2 Free Desktop Note apps for Windows”

    1. Mare

      Help!

      For the last three days I’ve been trying to find out the name of the application I used some time ago. Maybe you could be of help.

      The application was used to store notes. It was docked to the screen (usually bottom right corner). It could be activated on mouse-over. User should just click on it and write a note. Note would be automatically saved and sorted with the other notes by date/time (when it was saved). Notes were editable.

      Application was shareware – you could use it for free, but could not export the notes (or was it – could not export the notes as xml, but could export them as plain text.. something like that).

      It was a great and totally useful application. I lost it during re-installation of Windows, and didn’t have the need for it until few days ago…

      Do you, by any chance, recognize the application I’m talking about?

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