About two months ago, Microsoft announced that the new Sticky Notes app was finally “available to all users.” However, as is usual with Microsoft products, the rollout started gradually, and it took a while for Microsoft to complete it. Now, every OneNote user on Windows can access the new Sticky Notes app, and people are not happy about it.
First off, the app is still marked as a preview, which begs the question of why Microsoft is shipping pre-release versions of the software to everyone in the Stable Channel (there is the Microsoft 365 Insider program, after all). Plus, it’s still part of OneNote, so you’ll get the new app whether or not you want it, or whether you have the old Sticky Notes app installed. This also means that the only way to remove the new Sticky Notes app from your computer is to uninstall OneNote or the entire Office suite – not ideal.
And the worst part is that despite some interesting new features and a slick interface, the revamped Sticky Notes app is much slower than the old version. This defeats the purpose of Sticky Notes, a small, fast and lightweight app for quick note-taking. There are also some isolated reports of users losing their notes after upgrading, but these don’t seem to be widespread.
Fortunately, you can still use the old Sticky Notes app from the Microsoft Store. It works much better and faster and can still sync your stickies across devices with OneNote. Moreover, it is even possible to restore the “old old Sticky Notes app”, a desktop widget-like app with minimal effort without Microsoft account syncing, text formatting and other features.
Are you happy with the redesigned Sticky Notes app on Windows 10 and 11? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.