Get Windows Style Sticky Notes For Ubuntu with Indicator Stickynotes

ByAbhishek Prakash Updated on
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If you ever used Windows, you may have used the cool yellow colored sticky note apps which allows you to create small notes, that “sticks” on the desktop and helps you remember stuffs just like a real sticky note.

Linux has plenty of note taking applications but sometimes, all you need is a sticky note for your temporary to-do list.

If you are looking for Sticky notes for Ubuntu, here’s a tiny applet indicator that allows you to use quick sticky notes on Ubuntu-based distributions.

Indicator Stickynotes: A simple sticky note app for Ubuntu Linux

Indicator Stickynotes is a simple lightweight indicator applet for Ubuntu (and other Ubuntu based distributions) that can be used for scribbling some small tasks etc and can be “pasted” on the desktop to be reminded about it.

Some of the main features of Indicator Stickynotes are:

  • Create quick sticky notes, as many as you like
  • Group sticky notes into categories
  • Color code the categories
  • Lock sticky notes for accidental editing
  • Resize the notes as per your preference
  • Hide or show all sticky notes at once from global settings
  • Import and export your notes
  • Supports keyboard shortcut
  • Free and open source software licensed under GPL v3

Installing Sticky Notes on Ubuntu Based Distributions

Indicator Stickynotes can be installed by using its official PPA. Use the following commands in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:umang/indicator-stickynotes
sudo apt update
sudo apt install indicator-stickynotes

Once installed you can start using it straight away. No need for a restart or anything like that. Simply search for Stickynotes in the application menu and start it.

Using Indicator Stickynotes is very simple and self-explanatory. This picture will help you use most of its feature at one glance:

Get sticky notes for Ubuntu with indicator stickynotes

You can pin these sticky notes to the desktop or hide all of them using the option from the top panel.

If you are keyboard shortcut fan, you can also use the following keyboard shortcuts for handling sticky notes:

  • Ctrl + W : Delete note
  • Ctrl + L : Lock note
  • Ctrl + N : New note

I hope you enjoy the sticky notes in Ubuntu. If you don’t like Indicator Stickynotes, you can also try the good old Tomboy application.

How do you use sticky notes on Linux? Share your favorite application.

Creator of It's FOSS. An ardent Linux user & open source promoter. Huge fan of classic detective mysteries ranging from Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes to Detective Columbo & Ellery Queen. Also a movie buff with a soft corner for film noir.

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  • Indicator-Stickynotes is the ONLY stickynote app that remains on my laptop screen from session to session. All the others I have tried (about a dozen) disappear once I shut down and do NOT return when I boot up – even when I list them in Settings>Startup Apps and set them to start in their own preferences. Also, I really like I-S’s simplicity.

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    • You should be able to change that in the System Settings under Startup, but it depends on your distro as to where it will be found.

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    • I did a clean reinstall of Mint19.3, and now the only way to get ind-stickynotes to run is with the terminal. Have tried making a desktop launcher going into/usr/share/indicatorstickynotes, with about 6 of the listed items, but none worked. Can you please suggest what to do? Thank you. [email protected]

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  • There may be problems in step 1 of installing sticky notes if you are using a proxy.
    You could get an error like
    “Please check that the PPA name or format is correct”

    In this case you need to export your proxy environment variables. Open a terminal and type
    export http_proxy=http://username:[email protected]:port/
    export https_proxy=https://username:[email protected]:port/

    and then type:
    sudo -E add-apt-repository ppa:umang/indicator-stickynotes

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