If you dive deep enough into the latest versions of macOS Sonoma and Windows 11, you'll still end up uncovering applications and pages that haven't been updated in quite a while. On the best Macs, the application that comes to mind for me is Stickies. It's a basic, text-based app that lets you create virtual sticky notes in macOS. Stickies doesn't need to be all that complicated, for what it's worth. We have more robust note-taking apps and word processors already available on the platform, like Apple Notes and Pages. In fact, you could argue that Apple covers a lot of bases with Stickies, TextEdit, Notes, and Pages all available as first-party apps.

Still, I can't help but feel like there's a greater potential for Stickies that Apple is neglecting to unlock. The app hasn't meaningfully changed in decades. Yes, I know that the pad of sticky notes sitting on your real desk hasn't changed that much either, but that's beside the point. There's a much better way to use Stickies to enhance your productivity in 2024, and Apple is so close to figuring it out.

Wait, the Stickies app is still here?

With how much Apple Notes has grown, you might've forgotten about Stickies

Stickies is one of the few macOS apps that hasn't really been modernized to match the new macOS design language. What do I mean by that? Well, there was a design shift that coincided with the introduction of Apple silicon Macs. That's around the time when Apple moved away from the macOS 10 branding and moved on to yearly version number changes with macOS 11 Big Sur. The update to Big Sur ushered in new UI elements, a more curved design aesthetic, and app icons that reflected the squircle shape of iOS and iPadOS.

Apple actually updated the Stickies app icon to meet its Big Sur guidelines. However, the app itself has been virtually unchanged throughout its three-decade history. It debuted as part of System 7.5 in 1993 under a different name, and didn't change its app icon between Mac OS X 10.0 and macOS 10.15. Stickies has been a staple of consistency, and it's somewhat of a portal to a simpler time. If you looked at a sticky note in System 7.5 in the 1990s and another in the beta for macOS Sequoia in 2024, you'll see that they are identical.

And yet, it's still around. Stickies isn't a word-processor replacement, nor is it a competitor to Apple Notes. Over the years, we've seen Apple show a lot of attention to Notes, and not so much to Stickies. That may not be a bad thing. Stickies isn't cluttered with a bunch of unnecessary functionality or unwanted features, and maybe we took that for granted. Seeing all the apps and services that are overrun by artificial intelligence unnecessarily makes you appreciate the simplicity of Stickies a bit more. Plus, it still has some great utility, such as support for images, PDFs, markup tools, and formatting.

Stickies could be the perfect macOS widgets

Apple has a golden opportunity now that widgets are part of the Mac desktop

Now, I don't want Apple to ruin Stickies by overcomplicating it. These simple sticky notes have been a staple of macOS for three decades, and part of the reason why is that they just do what you need — no more, no less. If you asked me two years ago what Apple needed to change about Stickies, I might've had nothing to say. However, with the release of macOS Sonoma, Apple stumbled upon what should be the future of Stickies.

macOS Sonoma brought widgets that could be permanently fixed to the desktop. You could place them anywhere on the desktop, but they would stay put exactly where you placed them. Clicking a widget makes it come to life, and as soon as you start to use another app, the widgets fade into the translucent color of your wallpaper.

This is almost how the Stickies app works currently. You can add a translucent effect to a sticky note through Command + Option + T, and you can collapse a sticky note by double-clicking the top of the note. It works alright, but I can't help but think about how useful Stickies would be if they were available as full-fledged macOS Sonoma widgets. They'd be in one place, all the time, yet they wouldn't be as distracting as they can be now. Plus, a widget version of a sticky note will appear on every single instance of your desktop. Currently, a sticky note will only appear on one desktop space at a time.

I'm not asking for a massive Stickies overhaul. The original point of sticky notes was to give users a convenient place to jot down quick notes on their desktop. In 1993, the best way to do that was with a small, window-based application. Now, I think the best way to achieve that same goal is with macOS desktop widgets. I'm not an avid user of Stickies today, but if I could add notes as widgets on my desktop, it'd become a useful part of my productivity workflow.