Everything Stickies does well, and the four things it does not.
Stickies is free, floats on top, and stays put on the desktop. It cannot hide from a screen share, lock a note, keep a list you can browse, or answer an agent.
Floats on topOut of screen sharesOne-key capture$9.99 once
The short answer.
If you only read one part of this page, read this.
Choose HushNotes if…
- You save lines from many apps and want one key to do it
- You want notes over your work, full-screen apps included
- Your notes must stay out of screen shares and screenshots
- You want every note gone with one key, and back again
- Some notes need Touch ID
- You want a coding tool to read your notes, on this Mac only
Choose Stickies if…
- You need to export your notes: Text, RTF, RTFD
- Free matters most. Included with macOS.
If Stickies does all you need, keep it. Nothing here asks you to stop.
What each one
gives you.
Every line Stickies wins is here too. Each cell comes from the vendor’s own documentation.
| Capability | HushNotes | Stickies |
|---|---|---|
| Capture selected text from any app with one key | Yes, one key | Partial, A Service you bind yourself |
| Keeps where the text came from | Yes, The app, and the page from Safari or Chrome | Not documented |
| Floats above other apps, full screen included | Yes, full screen too | Floats, yes, Full screen not documented |
| Hidden from screen sharing and screenshots | Yes, by default | Not offered |
| Hide every note from another app, with one key | Yes, one key, ⌥⇧H, and it relocks | No, ⌘H hides the front app only |
| Lock a note behind Touch ID | Yes, per note | No |
| Paper per note, opacity per window | Six papers, 10–100%, The paper fades, never the ink | Colour and translucent, Translucent is on or off |
| Works without an account | Yes, none exists | Yes |
| Syncs to iPhone and iPad | No, Between Macs, through iCloud | No sync |
| Export your notes | No, Does not ship today | Text, RTF, RTFD |
| Agents can read your notes | Yes, four tools, Off by default, no delete | None |
| Price | $9.99 once33% off at launch | Free |
Nine things it does, four it will not.
HushNotes does a few things well. Here are the limits too, so you can decide with both lists in front of you.
HushNotes does
- Keep a selection from any app, one key
- Keep the app it came from, and the page from a browser
- Float over full-screen apps
- Stay out of screen shares and screenshots
- Clear the desk from wherever you are
- Lock a note behind Touch ID
- Give each note its own paper; opacity per window
- Work with no account, offline, paid once
- Answer an agent, on your machine only
HushNotes doesn’t
- Sync to your iPhone or iPad
- Share a note with another person
- Export your notes anywhere
- Organise anything by tags
Stickies covers one of the second list: it exports to plain text, RTF and RTFD.
One of these is free.
Stickies comes with macOS and always has. $9.99 once, down from $14.99, is the whole price of the other one.
Keep the stickies. Add a library.
The notes on the desktop can stay there. What you capture while you work now has somewhere to go, and a search that finds it later.
Your notes are on your screen,
not in the share.
Every note window is left out of screen shares, recordings and screenshots, on by default. Stickies doesn’t offer this.
The awkward ones,
answered.
Asked the way people ask them.
Yes, through a macOS Service called Make Sticky. It is not bound to a key on a clean install and Apple's Stickies guide does not document it, so you find it in Keyboard Shortcuts and assign the key yourself first.
Yes, and over full-screen apps as well. Apple documents Float on Top for Stickies but says nothing about a full-screen Space, so that row reads Not documented rather than No.
Apple's guide offers no lock for Stickies. Any HushNotes note locks from its gear menu and opens again with Touch ID, or with your account password on a Mac without the sensor.
Stickies can find across all notes, but there is no list to browse: every note is a window you have to have kept open. HushNotes keeps every note and every capture in one Shelf with instant local keyword search over titles, bodies and a capture's source.
The menu bar icon, which macOS always shows and which holds no note content, and a camera pointed at your display. Treat it as a strong privacy measure and not a guarantee.
That the vendor publishes no answer. Nothing there was proven absent, only left undocumented, which is why it does not read No.