Your Sticky Notes, One Click From the Menu Bar

How to set up menu bar sticky notes on a Mac, with no Dock icon

1. Open the Menu

   Click the Peel & Stick icon in the menu bar, a small note with lines of text on it.

2. Start a Sheet or Bring the Pad Forward

   Choose “Quick Stick” (⌥⌘N) for a fresh sheet, or “Show Stack” to bring the pad forward.

3. Peel It Off to Pin It

   “Quick Stick” doesn’t pin anything. Drag the written sheet off the pad from its bottom edge and let go on your desktop. Without Peel & Stick Pro, 3 notes can be pinned at once.

4. Turn Off the Dock Icon

   Choose “Settings…” (⌘,) and turn off “Show in the Dock”. Your pinned notes stay where they are.

5. Open Peel & Stick at Login

   In the same window, turn on “Open Peel & Stick when I log in”. It stays off until you turn it on.

What’s in the Peel & Stick Menu Bar Menu

As a menu bar notes app, Peel & Stick keeps its everyday commands in one menu under its icon. It works like a menu bar notepad: you write on a sheet, then peel it off and stick it on your desktop. Here is the menu from top to bottom. Some items change their name to say what they will do, such as “Show Stack” and “Hide Stack”.

• “Quick Stick” (⌥⌘N): a fresh sheet on the pad you’re writing on, ready for typing. The shortcut works from any app; see the sticky note keyboard shortcut for Mac.
• “Show Stack” or “Hide Stack”: bring the pad forward, or put it away.
• “Show the Classic Pad” or “Show the Board”: swap the Board of three pads for the single yellow “Classic pad”, or back. Your notes stay where they are.
• “Write on Tall pad”, “Write on Vellum pad”, “Write on Cloud pad”: on the Board only, pick the pad that gets your typing. A checkmark shows the pad in use. The “Cloud pad”, a pad of cloud-shaped notes rather than online storage, is part of Peel & Stick Pro.
• “Lock This Note”: the lock for the sheet you’re writing on. If that sheet is a locked note you have opened, you see “Lock Again Now” and “Remove the Lock” instead. These items appear only when the pad has a top sheet.
• “Corkboard Overview” (⌥⌘Space): your pinned notes where they sit, each on its own display, then the notes resting on your pads, up to 48 cards in all. It helps with sticky notes on a second monitor. If ⌥⌘Space does nothing, another shortcut on your Mac, often one of macOS’s own, already uses it; the menu item still works.
• “Show My Notes on a Dark Screen”: the idle screen, right away. You can choose it once at least one note is pinned.
• “Open Vault”: the Vault window, with one search across the typed text of your notes. Locked notes and drawings are not searched. If you choose a notes folder, every unlocked note is also kept there as a file, so you can back up sticky notes on Mac.
• “Settings…” (⌘,) and “Quit Peel & Stick” (⌘Q).

A Notes App Without a Dock Icon

Peel & Stick shows a Dock icon at first. To keep it in the menu bar only, open “Settings…” ▸ “Show in the Dock” and turn the switch off. The icon goes at once, with nothing to restart.

The line under the switch answers the obvious worry: “Turn this off and Peel & Stick lives only in the menu bar. Your notes stay pinned either way.”

With the Dock icon on, clicking it brings the pad back. With it off, choose “Show Stack” in the menu bar, or press ⌥⌘N for a fresh sheet on the pad.

With the Dock icon off and the “Classic pad” showing, Peel & Stick is one pad and one icon in the menu bar, plus the notes you pin: a simple notes app for Mac.

Open Your Notes App at Login

Turn on “Settings…” ▸ “Open Peel & Stick when I log in”, and Peel & Stick opens each time you log in, as a login item that macOS manages. The switch shows what macOS really has: if macOS turns the login item down, on a managed Mac for example, the switch goes back to off.

Each time Peel & Stick opens, your pinned notes come back where you left them. Putting the pad away with Escape doesn’t quit the app, and “Quit Peel & Stick” (⌘Q) saves every edit before it closes.

Your Notes on a Dark Screen While the Mac Is Idle

Turn on “Show my notes when the Mac is idle” in Settings and choose a wait under “After”: 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 or 30 minutes. When your Mac sits untouched that long, each display goes dark and shows the notes pinned to it, large enough to read from across the room. If no note is pinned, nothing comes up. Any locked note you had opened is locked again first. The first touch of the keyboard or trackpad puts the dark screen away and leaves you where you were.

Nothing can be drawn over the macOS screen saver or lock screen. Your notes come down when the screen saver starts, the screen locks or the display sleeps. Choose a wait shorter than your screen saver’s so your notes come up first, or set the screen saver to Never. Once the setting is on, Settings says this too and shows an “Open Lock Screen Settings…” button, which opens the macOS settings where you choose when the screen saver starts. To try the dark screen now, choose “Show My Notes on a Dark Screen” in the menu bar.

Questions