Stickies

Question

Level 1

4 points

Stickies

I contacted Apple about this and had to cut the chat short due to my schedule... but even during my contact, I felt the agent was unfamiliar with what I was talking about.

For YEARS, I used stickies widgets. Not the sickies apps. The widgets - they were on a separate desktop. I would swipe with three fingers on my touchpad to access it. Other kinds of widgets included the weather, the time in other major cities, etc. I had a ton of sticky notes with a lot of information on them.

I have kept a backup of my computer for a long time, and I really hope I can access the information in some way through Time Machine. I updated to Big Sur in the last two weeks.

Ever since I upgraded to Big Sur, I have not seen these widgets or a way to access the information on these sticky notes. If Apple informed users these would be deleted or that this widget desktop would no longer be available, I would have saved the information on these in a Word document or at least tried to remember the file path for it.

Can I restore the information on these stickies using Time Machine backup? I don't understand how to access my Time Machine backup to restore this. I believe the extension for these files is .plist but I'm not sure.
Found one file called "Stickies Database" in Users>[me]>Library. But it appears to only have information from one of the many stickies I had. Any thoughts on where I can find the rest?

Thx

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 11.3

Posted on May 12, 2021 9:10 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

etresoft

Level 9

56,572 points

May 14, 2021 4:58 PM in response to txpsjg

It looks like the widget stickies are elsewhere.

Go back to the Library folder in your home folder. Go into the Preferences folder. Look for the file named "widget-com.apple.widget.stickies.plist". This file will have your stickies inside it.

There are many different apps that can open these plist files. I recommend BBEdit (https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/). I will open the file as an XML file. You should be able to see the content for each sticky in sets of 4 keys. For example, I created a couple of stickies in a 10.13 VM and this is what the plist file looks like in BBEdit:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>06306b65a227c341-color</key>
	<string>Images/yellow.png</string>
	<key>06306b65a227c341-data</key>
	<string>Sticktest</string>
	<key>06306b65a227c341-font</key>
	<string>MarkerFelt-Thin</string>
	<key>06306b65a227c341-size</key>
	<string>Auto</string>
	<key>791f7b6ea227c341-color</key>
	<string>Images/yellow.png</string>
	<key>791f7b6ea227c341-data</key>
	<string>Archest</string>
	<key>791f7b6ea227c341-font</key>
	<string>MarkerFelt-Thin</string>
	<key>791f7b6ea227c341-size</key>
	<string>Auto</string>
	<key>color</key>
	<string>Images/yellow.png</string>
	<key>font</key>
	<string>MarkerFelt-Thin</string>
	<key>size</key>
	<string>Auto</string>
</dict>
</plist>

One sticky is under the "06306b65a227c341" key and the other is under the "791f7b6ea227c341". You probably want the "-data" value for each.

Reply

Answer 2

Jack-19

Level 8

46,248 points

May 14, 2021 4:35 PM in response to txpsjg

Hi txpsjg,

Your are referring to the Dashboard. It is no longer in macOS, as it has been removed. There is no way to get it back in macOS Big Sur.

Cheers,

Jack

Reply

Stickies

Similar questions