Your Mac Stickies vanished after a restart. Here is how to find the old notes

You restarted your Mac, or macOS updated overnight, and Apple Stickies opened with nothing in it. In almost every case the notes are still on the disk. Stickies keeps each one as its own file, in a folder you can look at, copy, and restore.

Notes still in Stickies but not on screen? Then they are hidden rather than lost, and Mac Stickies not showing covers the other desktop, fullscreen and behind-the-windows checks.

On a Windows PC? This page is about Apple Stickies on a Mac. Microsoft Sticky Notes goes missing for different reasons, and we cover those in Windows sticky notes disappeared.

Where Stickies actually keeps your notes

Since macOS High Sierra, Stickies is a sandboxed app, so its data lives inside its container rather than loose in your Library. The folder is:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Stickies/Data/Library/Stickies/

To open it, switch to the Finder, press Shift Cmd G, paste the path, and press Return. Inside you will find one package per note, named with a long identifier and ending in .rtfd, plus a small hidden file called .SavedStickiesState that records where each note window sits on screen. Every recovery below comes down to that one folder.

On Macs that were upgraded from something older than High Sierra, there may also be a single file at ~/Library/StickiesDatabase. That is the legacy format. macOS migrates it into the container on first launch, and the old file is sometimes left behind.

First, the two checks that need no recovery at all

The notes are there, just not showing

Look in the folder. If you see .rtfd packages, your notes exist and Stickies is simply failing to display them. The usual reason is a stale .SavedStickiesState, which happens after a display change: notes that lived on an external monitor are saved at coordinates that no longer exist once it is unplugged. The fix:

1. Quit Stickies completely, with Cmd Q, not just closing windows.
2. In that folder, move .SavedStickiesState to the desktop. Press Shift Cmd . if hidden files are not showing.
3. Reopen Stickies. It rebuilds the state file and every note reappears at a default position.

You are signed into a different account

Stickies data is per user and it does not sync through iCloud. If the Mac was set up fresh, or you are in a new user account after a migration, the notes are still in the old account's container, not gone.

Recovering after a restart or crash

Stickies writes to disk when it quits, not as you type. A hard shutdown, a force quit, or a crash during an update can lose the most recent edits, and in rare cases leave a note package empty. If the folder is empty or the note you need is missing, Time Machine is the path back:

1. Quit Stickies.
2. In the Finder, go to the Stickies folder above so it is the front window.
3. Open Time Machine from the menu bar and step back to a date before the restart.
4. Select the whole Stickies folder and click Restore. Replace what is there.
5. Reopen Stickies.

If you use another backup tool, the same rule applies: restore that folder, with Stickies closed, then launch it. Do not restore a single .rtfd into a live Stickies session, because it will overwrite the folder on quit.

Recovering after a macOS upgrade

When notes vanish specifically after a major update, check for the legacy file first. If ~/Library/StickiesDatabase exists and is not tiny, it holds your notes. Quit Stickies, make sure the container folder above is empty or backed up, and launch Stickies again. It looks for that legacy database on launch and imports it. If the import does not happen, restoring the legacy file from Time Machine to that exact path and relaunching usually does.

When there is no backup

Without Time Machine and with an empty folder, the honest answer is that the text is gone. Two things are still worth trying. Spotlight indexes Stickies content, so searching a phrase you remember can surface an .rtfd that is sitting somewhere unexpected. And if you ever copied the container folder, or a whole home folder, that copy contains the notes.

Why this keeps happening

Every step above exists because Stickies saves on quit, stores everything in one hidden folder, and ties each note to the desktop rather than to the thing the note is about. Those are design choices from a much older Mac, and they are why a restart can feel like a loss.

If you are weighing up what to move to, we compared the best sticky notes app for Mac options on the five things that decide it, including the row where ours loses.

TackNote was built the other way round. Notes are saved continuously as you type, encrypted on your Mac, so a crash costs a sentence rather than a session. They are searchable, so a note you cannot find is an inconvenience rather than a loss. And each note is anchored to a window, tab, document, or email, so it appears when that thing is in front of you and does not depend on a desktop you have not looked at in a week.

If your notes vanished today, check the folder first, then .SavedStickiesState, then Time Machine, in that order. If it has happened more than once, the fix is a note that does not save on quit.

On a Windows PC instead? Microsoft Sticky Notes goes missing for different reasons, which we cover in Windows sticky notes disappeared.

Questions

Are Stickies saved in iCloud?

No. Stickies keeps each note as a file in a folder on your Mac, in your own user account, and does not sync it through iCloud. To see your stickies on your other Apple devices, choose File > Export All to Notes in Stickies and use Apple Notes, which syncs through iCloud.

Where are Stickies stored on a Mac?

In ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Stickies/Data/Library/Stickies/, as one .rtfd package per note. On a Mac upgraded from a version older than macOS High Sierra, there may also be an older file at ~/Library/StickiesDatabase.

Can I get my Stickies back after a restart?

Usually, yes. Look in the Stickies folder first. If the notes are there but not showing, quit Stickies, move .SavedStickiesState to the desktop and reopen it. If the folder is empty, quit Stickies and restore the whole folder from Time Machine, from a date before the restart.