JXT Sticky Notes

A clean, classy and fully customizable sticky notes app for Windows. Lives in your system tray, starts with Windows, and stays out of your way.

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Features

• Auto-start with Windows and start minimized to the system tray
• Unlimited notes: frameless, draggable, resizable
• Always on top: globally, or pin individual notes
• Full customization from a dedicated settings window (live preview):
  • Note colors: 10 curated presets plus any custom color
  • Auto text contrast or your own text color
  • Any installed font, adjustable text size
  • Note opacity (frosted glass look), corner roundness, drop shadow
  • Default size for new notes
• Per-note overrides: color, transparency, text size, always-on-top
• Minimal by design: controls only appear when you hover a note
• Collapse a note to its title bar with a double-click
• Light formatting: bold, italic, strikethrough, bullet lists
• Autosave: your notes and positions are restored exactly as you left them
• Single instance: launching it again simply brings your notes forward
• Private: everything is stored locally. No accounts, no network, no telemetry

Download

Grab the latest JXT-Sticky-Notes.exe from the Releases page and run it. No installer and no admin rights needed.

Note: the exe is not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may show a warning the first time. Click More info → Run anyway, or build it yourself from source (below).

Using it

Action	How
New note	+ on a note, Ctrl+N, or the tray menu
Move a note	Drag its top bar
Resize	Drag the bottom-right corner
Colors, transparency, text size, duplicate, delete	⋯ menu on a note
Keep a note on top	📌 button on the note
Collapse / expand	Double-click the top bar
Show / hide all notes	Click the tray icon
Settings	Tray icon → Settings…
Bold / italic	Ctrl+B / Ctrl+I
Strikethrough	Ctrl+Shift+X
Bullet list	Ctrl+Shift+L

Start with Windows is turned on the first time you run the app. To turn it off, open Settings → General (or right-click the tray icon). It uses the per-user registry Run key, so uninstalling is as simple as switching it off and deleting the exe.

Run from source

Requires Python 3.10+ on Windows.

git clone https://github.com/jxtsidhu/JXT-Sticky-Notes.git
cd JXT-Sticky-Notes
python -m pip install -r requirements.txt
python main.py

Build the exe yourself

build.bat

This installs the build tools, generates the icon and produces dist\JXT-Sticky-Notes.exe using PyInstaller.

Where is my data?

Notes and settings are stored as plain JSON in %APPDATA%\JXTStickyNotes\ (notes.json and settings.json). Settings → About → Open data folder takes you there. Copy the folder to back up or move your notes.

Project structure

main.py             entry point
app.py              controller, tray icon, single-instance logic
note_window.py      the sticky note window
settings_dialog.py  customization UI
widgets.py          custom-painted controls
themes.py           palette, styles, app icon
autostart.py        start-with-Windows (registry)
config.py           settings + paths
make_icon.py        generates icon.png and icon.ico
build.bat           builds the exe

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Ideas on the wishlist: global hotkey for a new note, checklists, note search, import/export, and theme packs.

License

Released under the MIT License. Copyright © 2026 Jxt Sidhu.