Create a New Floating Stickies Note from Anywhere in Mac OS X with Shift+Command+Y

Jan 18, 2010 - 9 Comments

Stickies note-made-from-text-mac

You may already know that you can use a keystroke to make a Stickies Note from Safari app in Mac OS X, but did you know that same keystroke works in many more apps on the Mac?

Yes, it turns out you can instantly create a Stickies note from almost anywhere and any application in Mac OS X by highlighting the text or image, and hitting the Command+Shift+Y keys concurrently.


In the screenshot example below, I pulled a text snippet from Wikipedia in the Chrome browser into a new Stickies note instantly by using the key combo.

instant stickies note

But this trick isn’t limited to web browsers, you can make new notes from almost any other app like TextEdit and Pages, making this an excellent trick to add to your keystroke memorization list and repertoire of handy keyboard shortcuts.

Just remember the simple process:

  • Select text, words, images, with the mouse cursor in almost any Mac application
  • Hit Shift+Command+Y concurrently to launch the selected block into Stickies as a new note

mac todo list - stickies

Piece of cake, and totally awesome. I use this all the time when researching and gathering information for projects, yet another Mac feature that I can’t live without!

Stickies have been around a long time, as many longterm Mac users know, but it’s just as useful today as it was way back in the older days of computing too, so if you don’t use the Stickies app yet, open it up and give it a try!

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Related articles:

Posted by: Paul Horowitz in Mac Apps, Mac OS, Tips & Tricks, Utilities

9 Comments

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  1. Nice commentary. Last Month I found this site and wanted to let you know that I have been gratified, going through your site’s pages. I shall be signing up to your RSS feed and might wait for your next post. Best Regards, Roberts

  2. Adam says:

    Thanks, this is a great tip. I find myself using this to make snippets in Firefox all the time.

    Just one problem though, that key combination always gives me two duplicate stickies. Any ideas?

  3. Jason Pollock says:

    Doesn’t work for me either – seems to depend on the application.

    Chromium, Thunderbird – No.
    NetNewsWire – Yes
    Adium – No

    So, spotty at best.

  4. deutchland says:

    this def works in 10.5 and 10.6 i use it all the time for creating a multi tiered clipboard while researching. if you are having trouble, try alternate commands for your keyboard layout, like command+option

  5. Clusterbuster says:

    it doesn’t work in SnowLeopard, either..

  6. Jasper says:

    awesome. Always passively wondered if there was a way to do this. Thanks.

  7. Xtn says:

    doesn’t seem to work in PPC MacOS 10.5 (leopard)

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