Notes Stack vs Sticky Notes Extensions

Sticky note extensions (like Sticky Notes, Google Keep-style widgets, and floating note tools) place draggable note boxes directly on top of web pages. It's an intuitive concept — digital Post-its on your screen. But this approach comes with serious trade-offs. Notes Stack takes a cleaner path: notes in the browser's dedicated side panel, separate from your page content.

Feature Comparison

Where Notes Stack Wins

No Page Clutter

The biggest problem with sticky note extensions is that they float on top of your content. They can cover text, images, buttons, and links. If the page layout changes or you resize your window, the notes may end up in the wrong position or overlap important content. Notes Stack uses the browser's side panel — a completely separate space that never covers your page.

Survives Layout Changes

Sticky notes are often anchored to pixel positions on the page. If the website redesigns its layout, changes its CSS, or serves a different version on a different screen size, your sticky notes can end up in random spots. Notes Stack notes are linked to the URL, not to a position on the page, so they always show up regardless of layout changes.

Rich Formatting

Most sticky note extensions give you a plain text box — sometimes with basic colors. Notes Stack provides a full rich text editor with headings, bold, italic, blockquotes, code blocks, and task lists.

Organization with Stacks

Sticky note extensions typically have no organization system beyond colors. Notes Stack lets you create named, color-coded stacks and filter your notes by stack or by domain. When you have dozens of notes across different sites, this makes a huge difference.

Works Everywhere

Sticky note extensions rely on injecting content into web pages using content scripts. Some sites block content scripts or have strict Content Security Policies that prevent the notes from appearing. Notes Stack runs in the browser side panel, which is a first-party browser feature — it works on every site, including chrome:// pages.

Where Sticky Notes Extensions Win

Visual Proximity

There's something satisfying about placing a note right next to the specific paragraph or element you're annotating. If your workflow involves annotating very specific parts of a page (like marking up a design), positional sticky notes provide that spatial context.

Instant Visibility

Sticky notes are visible immediately when you load a page — you don't need to open a panel. If you use notes as visual reminders that should jump out at you, floating notes do this well.