How to Lock a Sticky Note on Your Mac
Click the Padlock
On the “Board” (the tray with three pads), hover the three dots at its edge (“Tools”) and click the padlock, “Lock This Note”. On the “Classic pad”, it’s in ☰ “Lists & More Tools”. For a note on your desktop, hover the note and click the padlock beside it.
Add a PIN, If You Want One
In “Lock this note”, turn on “Add a PIN as well” and type the same PIN in “PIN” and “PIN again”: 4 to 32 characters. You can skip this step.
Lock It
Click “Lock This Note”. A note on your desktop closes at once. A note on the pad stays open on top until you peel it off and stick it up.
Open It Again
Click the fingerprint. macOS asks for Touch ID, your Apple Watch or your login password straight away. If the note has a PIN, you can choose “Use PIN” instead, then “Enter your PIN”: type it and click “Unlock with PIN”. A note that closed on a pad opens from “Corkboard Overview” (every note at a glance) in the menu bar.
Close It, or Take the Lock Off
Right-click an open locked note on your desktop: “Lock Again Now” closes it at once, and “Remove the Lock” makes it an ordinary note again. On the pad, while the note is open, the padlock becomes “Remove the Lock”: click it to take the lock off.
Lock Notes on Your Mac, One Sticky Note at a Time
To lock sticky notes on a Mac with Peel & Stick, you lock each note on its own, on the pad or stuck to your desktop. A locked note keeps its paper and, on your desktop, its spot; only its words and drawing are put away behind the fingerprint.
“Lock This Note” is in four places:
- the padlock in the tools beside your pad
- the padlock beside a pinned note, when you hover it
- a pinned note’s right-click menu
- the menu bar menu, for the sheet on top of your pad; more in menu bar notes app for Mac
Password-Protect Sticky Notes With Touch ID, Apple Watch or a PIN
To lock a note with Touch ID, you don’t need to set anything up in Peel & Stick. A locked note opens with your Mac’s own check: Touch ID, an unlocked paired Apple Watch or your login password. If your Mac can’t check it’s you at all, Peel & Stick won’t lock the note.
The optional PIN is 4 to 32 characters: letters, digits or symbols. You set it when you lock the note. It’s another way in, not a second lock. Peel & Stick stores only a salted, stretched hash of it, so nobody can recover it for you. To use a different PIN later, remove the lock and lock the note again.
Hide Sticky Note Content While a Note Is Locked
A lock covers a closed note. Once you open it, anyone looking at your screen can read it, so on calls you can also hide sticky notes when screen sharing. While a note is locked, its words stay out of the rest of Peel & Stick:
- Search leaves it out, even while the note is open.
- Notifications and the Shortcuts note picker show “Locked note” instead of its first line.
- In “Corkboard Overview”, its card shows the fingerprint, not the words, even while the note is open.
- On a closed note, VoiceOver reads “Locked note. Its contents are hidden until you unlock it.”
Private Sticky Notes: Encoded, Not Encrypted
Locked notes are encoded, not encrypted. Once a locked note closes, Peel & Stick won’t show its words again without Touch ID, your Apple Watch, your login password or the note’s PIN, but someone with access to this Mac’s files who knows how could read them. The lock guards reading in Peel & Stick; it doesn’t protect the file.
Peel & Stick has no server and doesn’t send your notes anywhere. Locked notes stay in Peel & Stick’s own storage on this Mac. If you use Time Machine, its backups include that storage, with locked notes still encoded.
When a Locked Note Closes Again
A note that closes while it rests on a pad goes under the other sheets. To read it again, choose it in “Corkboard Overview” and unlock it; it comes back on top of its pad, open.
An open locked note closes again:
- when your screen sleeps or you switch to another user, for every open note
- when your pinned notes come up on a dark screen, from “Show My Notes on a Dark Screen” in the menu bar or from “Show my notes when the Mac is idle” in Settings, for every open note
- when you quit Peel & Stick
- for pinned notes, when you switch to another app or leave them untouched for 15 minutes
- for a note on the pad, when you peel it off and stick it up
- whenever you choose “Lock Again Now”
Questions
Can I password-protect a sticky note on Mac?
Yes. In Peel & Stick, lock the note with its padlock. Touch ID, your Apple Watch or your login password opens it, and so does a PIN if you add one.
Are locked notes encrypted?
No: they’re encoded, not encrypted. The lock guards reading in Peel & Stick; someone with access to this Mac’s files who knows how could read them.
What if my Mac has no Touch ID?
Your login password opens the note, or an unlocked paired Apple Watch. Peel & Stick offers only what your Mac has.
What does a PIN add?
Another way in, not a second lock: Touch ID and your login password still open the note. You can’t change the PIN later, nobody can recover a forgotten one, and Peel & Stick doesn’t limit wrong tries.
Are locked notes in my notes folder?
No. If you use a notes folder, a locked note leaves it and stays in Peel & Stick’s own storage, which Time Machine backups include in encoded form. Remove the lock and the note goes back into the folder. More in back up sticky notes on Mac.
Is locking a Pro feature?
No. Locking, with or without a PIN, is free on every plan. See what you can do without Pro.
