Apple Stickies vs Perch: sticky notes on the Mac, compared
Updated 2 September 2026 · 4 minute read
Does Mac have sticky notes?
Yes. Every Mac ships with Stickies, a free app that has been part of macOS since 1994. Open it from the Applications folder or press ⌘ Space and type "Stickies" — each note is a small coloured window that sits on your desktop. It supports text formatting, six colours, and translucent or collapsed notes, and it costs nothing.
For a single-screen Mac and a couple of reminders, Stickies is genuinely fine. This page is about where it stops being fine.
Why your Stickies keep disappearing
Stickies notes are ordinary windows, and that's the whole problem. A window lives on one desktop Space, on one display, and stacks behind every window you open after it. So:
- Enter a fullscreen app, and your notes are gone until you leave it.
- Switch Spaces, and the note stayed on the other one.
- Work across two or three monitors, and every glance at a note starts with "which screen did I leave it on?"
None of this is a bug. It's what desktop windows do. Which suggests the fix isn't a better window — it's not using a window at all.
The menu bar is on every display
macOS draws the menu bar across the top of every connected display. That's the one place a note can live and be one click away no matter which screen you're looking at. This is the idea behind Perch: sticky notes that open from the menu bar, on whichever display your cursor is on, over fullscreen apps, exactly where you left off — same note, same scroll, same cursor position.
Head to head
| Capability | Apple Stickies | Perch |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, built in | Free trial, then $9.99 once |
| Visible from every display | No — each note is on one display | Yes — opens from the menu bar on any display |
| Works over fullscreen apps | No | Yes |
| Reopens where you left off | Windows stay where dropped | Same note, same cursor position |
| Smart bullet & numbered lists | Manual formatting | Type "- " or "1. " and it becomes a list |
| Global hotkey | No | ⌥ Space from anywhere |
| Notes always on the desktop | Yes — that's its model | No — notes appear on click, then get out of the way |
| Images in notes | Yes | No — text only, on purpose |
| Sync to iPhone | No | No (not yet) |
Which should you use?
Keep Stickies if you use one screen, like notes permanently visible on the desktop, or want images in your notes. It's free and it's already there.
Try Perch if you use more than one display, lose notes behind fullscreen apps, or keep one running note all day and want it back mid-sentence in one click. The honest test takes three days and no signup.