ShixxNOTE Sticky Notes & LAN Messenger for Windows

Windows Sticky Notes is a personal notepad for one computer. ShixxNOTE does that too, and then keeps going where the built-in app stops.

Sending notes to other people. This is the difference that matters most. Windows Sticky Notes has no way at all to send a note to a colleague. ShixxNOTE delivers a note straight to another desktop over your local network, to several computers at once, or to a saved group, and it can also send the same note by e-mail. It works as a full office LAN messenger →.

Appearance. Windows Sticky Notes offers seven fixed colors and one font. ShixxNOTE comes with sixteen note themes →, lets you change the font, size, color, alignment and paragraph settings of any part of the text, and lets you save your own themes and reuse them.

Reminders. The built-in app has no alarm. ShixxNOTE can raise an alarm on a given date and time, repeat it daily, weekly or monthly, and make a note expire by itself after a day, a week, a month or on a date you pick.

Where your notes live. Windows Sticky Notes syncs through a Microsoft account. ShixxNOTE stores everything locally on your own computer, with no account, no cloud and no sign-in, which is what makes it usable on closed and air-gapped networks. See secure notes software →.

Everyday handling. ShixxNOTE adds export and import of notes to a file, printing, saving a note as a picture, a hot key for a new note, and the option to lock "Show all notes" with a password. It also runs on Windows 7 through Windows 11, while the built-in app requires Windows 10 or newer.

Yes. For short messages and quick announcements within the same network, ShixxNOTE is significantly faster than email. It works peer-to-peer: notes are sent directly from one computer to another without routing through any server or mail client. As long as the target computer is online and reachable on the LAN, the note arrives instantly, making it a practical replacement for internal email in most everyday scenarios.

Yes. A note travels to another computer through a channel that carries a little over ten thousand characters. A longer note than that cannot be sent over the network.

Since Build 207 the program simply turns such a note down and tells you its length and the limit, so you know how much to shorten it by. The note itself is left untouched. Sending the same note by e-mail has no such limit, which is usually the easier way out.

Yes. ShixxNOTE runs quietly in the Windows system tray. A double-click on the tray icon creates a new note straight away, and a right-click opens the main program menu.

The icon itself was redrawn in Build 207. It now carries six separate pictures, from 16 up to 128 pixels, each drawn for its own size, so it stays sharp in the tray and in window title bars instead of being stretched from a single 32 pixel image.

Yes. ShixxNOTE is well suited for classrooms, training centers, and computer labs. Instructors can send notes or announcements directly to student computers over the local network, without any internet access required. Because all communication stays within the school's internal network, it is a practical and safe tool for educational institutions.

No. Older builds had a fault where the program trusted a stored count of how many notes it had instead of reading the notes actually saved in the file. After a note was deleted from the middle of the list, one real note could be quietly dropped on the next start, and the same thing repeated on every following start.

This was fixed in Build 207. The program now reads the notes it really has, closes the gap in the file itself, and removes an entry only after the note has been safely written to its new place. Any note that a wrong count had been hiding comes back the first time Build 207 is started.

Sixteen supplied themes, reachable from the note's own Theme menu. Build 207 added Purple, Red, Candy and Green Mint to the twelve that were there before.

A theme changes the note background, the title bar colors and the border, and leaves text you have already written untouched. You can also save your own themes, set one as the default, and have a random theme picked for every new note.

ShixxNOTE is lightweight and optimized for low system resource usage. It is written in Microsoft Visual C++, with a focus on performance and efficiency. The program is a single executable file of about 4.5 MB with no runtime to install alongside it, so it starts quickly and its memory and CPU impact stays minimal. Since Build 207 everything is inside that one file: the separate ResolveIP.exe helper and the FreeImage.dll library are gone, and the program no longer needs the .NET Framework on the computer.

Yes. ShixxNOTE starts automatically with Windows by default, so it is always ready when you log in. This behavior can be disabled at any time in the settings if you prefer manual startup. By default, ShixxNOTE also scans the local network (LAN) to detect available computers, and this feature can be turned off as well.

Yes. ShixxNOTE is optimized to run smoothly even on older or low-spec systems. It is written in native C++ with no runtime framework behind it, which is what keeps it usable on hardware that struggles with modern software.

It still runs on Windows 7, as well as on Windows 8, 10 and 11, in both 32-bit and 64-bit editions. That makes it a practical choice for old office machines, laboratory and workshop computers, and any PC that has to stay on an older Windows version and cannot be replaced.

Yes. Build 207 added a "Restore default settings" button to the Settings window, between "Save and Apply changes" and "Cancel". It puts all three tabs back to what a newly installed program starts with, in one step, and it asks before it does anything.

What it leaves alone matters as much: your notes, saved themes, recipients and groups, the e-mail account and the "Show all notes" password all stay exactly as they are. The settings are restored the moment you answer yes, so pressing "Cancel" afterwards does not bring the old ones back.

No, not since Build 207. Reading the network neighborhood takes about ten seconds, and the notes used to appear on the desktop only once that had finished. The reading now runs in the background, so your notes are there straight away.

The computers found last time are kept in a file of their own, so opening "Send note to other" while the reading is still going gives you the previous list, and the list replaces itself the moment the new one is ready. The scan only happens at all when "Read network neighborhood on program startup" is set to Yes.