New Sticky Notes Experience Starts Rolling Out to Windows Users

Microsoft has started rolling out a new Sticky Notes experience to all Windows 11 and Windows 10 users. The redesigned app can now be accessed from OneNote for Windows, and it comes with a new shortcut for taking screenshots and automatic source capture capabilities.

This new Sticky Notes experience has been available in preview with Office Insiders since February. As of this writing, this new Sticky Notes app still comes with a “Preview” label, and it coexists alongside the regular app. The new app can be launched from the top right corner of the OneNote ribbon, and after opening it, it can be pinned to the taskbar or accessed via the Windows Start Menu or the Win + Alt + S keyboard shortcut.

At first sight, you may think that the new app doesn’t look that different from the existing Sticky Notes app, except for the new Screenshot button at the top. This button will take a screenshot of your current app window, and I’ll have more on that later. You can also scroll down to see Quick Tips cards, and your list of existing notes should be there if you sign into the app with your Microsoft account. Of course, you can still pop out any note and see it in a larger window you can move across your screen.

The new Screenshot button automatically creates a new note, but it also lets users easily see where the information was taken from. That can be the name of a document, a website, or important slides shown during a Teams meeting.

“If you’ve taken a note or screenshot from a website, you can easily return to the original source by clicking the auto-captured link,” the Office team explained. “When you revisit the same document or website, we’ll conveniently bring up the relevant notes for you.”

This new Sticky Notes app also uses optical character recognition (OCR) in search to let users find text in images. Overall, the new app appears to be a solid upgrade, and all notes created with it can still be found in the OneNote apps for iOS and Android. The Office team said that the new Sticky Notes experience will roll out gradually to Windows users, but make sure to have OneNote version 2402 (Build 17328.20000) or newer on your PC.