Comparison

Sticky Notes + Widget Memo vs Notes Writer

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Sticky Notes + Widget Memo

Organize your thoughts with customizable stickies and widgets. Create typed or handwritten notes, organize them with colored folders, and set reminders. Sync across devices and protect your data with password locks.

Highlights
  • Customizable home screen widgets
  • Colored folders and sub-folders
  • Handwritten and typed notes
  • Note sharing
  • Password protection
  • iCloud sync and backup
  • Customizable backgrounds and icons
Features
Read full description

Boost your productivity with these simple and fun colored notes reminders. Customize your home screen with colorful stickies and folders widgets. Take manual backups to keep your note safe just in case. Organize notes with colored folders and sub-folders to efficiently classify your information. Take hand written notes and doodle along with typed once. Share notes as text or a drawing to other supporting apps. Manage deleted items and restore notes you thought you will not need again. Protect and lock your notes and folders with a password. Search for notes and folders if they are out of your sight. Pop your notes with custom backgrounds, or mark the notes with an icon to specify an importance, to classify the information in it, or just for fun. Sort your notes and folders automatically by various criteria, or move them around manually. Type your notes with custom fonts. Schedule reminders notifications in your notes to be reminded of important events. Sync and backup your notes in your iCloud account, so you will be able to access your notes across your iCloud enabled devices. Enjoy the app with no ads and no subscriptions. Sticky Notes is available to you for free for a trial period of 7 days. Mac floating notes version of the app is sold separately.

About

Notes Writer

This app combines handwriting, PDFs, voice recordings, and AI for note-taking, document annotation, and idea organization. It offers a paper-like writing experience with various tools and supports students, professionals, and writers with specialized features.

Highlights
  • Handwriting with Apple Pencil
  • PDF annotation and form filling
  • Voice recording and transcription
  • AI-powered writing assistance
  • Flashcard creation and spaced repetition
  • Quiz generation from notes
  • Document import and export
Features
Read full description

Notes Writer brings handwriting, PDFs, voice, documents and AI together on iPad and iPhone. Take notes in class, mark up a contract, record a meeting or plan a thesis, and keep it all in one place that is easy to search and share. HANDWRITING THAT FEELS LIKE PAPER • Write with Apple Pencil using pens, pencils, markers, fountain pens and watercolor brushes, and refine with the lasso, ruler and shapes. • Mix handwriting, typed text, images, stickers and audio on one page. • Choose blank, ruled, Cornell, planner, music or graph paper. • Search your handwriting, check its spelling, or convert it to text, math or LaTeX. • Tap your ink to hear what was said as you wrote it. FOR STUDENTS • Record lectures while you write, then search the transcript. • Hide key facts under Tape, reveal them one by one and turn them into flashcards. • Study flashcards with spaced repetition, reminders and a Home Screen widget. • Make a quiz from your notes, a topic or pasted text, and score yourself. • Circle a problem with Magic Lasso and ask AI to explain, solve or check it. • Find free open textbooks and keep each subject together in a Study Project. FOR PROFESSIONALS • Meeting Notes records and transcribes the meeting, enhances your notes and writes a summary with action items. • Mark up PDFs, fill forms, sign, measure plans and redact text. • Scan paper documents and recognize their text. • Present on an external display or with AirPlay, using a laser pointer. • Brainstorm on whiteboards with sticky notes, images and recordings. • Open Word, RTF, Markdown and plain text, and export to PDF, DOCX, RTF, HTML or EPUB. FOR WRITERS AND RESEARCHERS • Draft in rich text and keep your sources open in tabs. • Organize long projects in the Binder, plan on the Corkboard, save snapshots and compile a manuscript or ebook. • Write LaTeX papers with a live PDF preview. • Combine explanations, graphs, charts and Python cells in Math Notebooks. • Structure ideas as outlines and exchange them in OPML. AI THAT WORKS WITH YOUR NOTES • Rewrite, simplify, translate, or fix spelling and grammar. • Ask questions and get answers from your own notes, PDFs and transcripts. • Summarize a reading, a recording or a meeting. You decide what goes into your notes. YOUR NOTES, YOUR WAY • Import notes from other note-taking apps. • Sketch with graphite and charcoal, or paint with watercolor, oils and acrylics. • Share an iPad with separate profiles, each with its own notes and an optional passcode. • Keep folders with covers, and work with files in iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive and the Files app. • Autosave, recovery, backups and passcodes protect your work. Privacy Policy http://www.noteswriter.com/Kairoos_Privacy_Policy.html Terms of Use https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Screenshots

Sticky Notes + Widget Memo4 screens
Notes Writer4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: Notes Writer at 4.5 against Sticky Notes + Widget Memo's 2.9. Notes Writer also leads on update cadence (every 4 days vs every 3 weeks) and ratings volume (7.3K vs 70). Sticky Notes + Widget Memo's advantage is iOS requirement (16.0 vs 26.0). On price, review sentiment, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Sticky Notes + Widget Memo sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and Notes Writer sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $1.99 per 7 days. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Notes Writer holds the better App Store score, 4.5 against 2.9. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Notes Writer has 7.3K ratings behind it against 70, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 48% of Sticky Notes + Widget Memo's written reviews are positive against 45% of Notes Writer's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Sticky Notes + Widget Memo ships an update every 3 weeks, Notes Writer every 4 days. The most recent releases landed on November 2, 2026 and November 13, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard4 real differences · 6 level
Sticky Notes + Widget Memo versus Notes Writer: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSticky Notes + Widget MemoNotes Writer
PriceFreeFree
Rating2.9 (70 ratings)4.5 (7.3K ratings) — better
Positive reviews47.9% of reviews — better44.7% of reviews
Number of ratings707.3K — better
Update frequencyEvery 3 weeksEvery 4 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS16.0 — better26.0
Further details — not scored
Size14 MB688 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperAlina VetrovKairoos Solutions SL

Customer experience

Sticky Notes + Widget Memo

All ratings69 ratings
Positive43.5%
Neutral10.1%
Negative46.4%
Written reviews411 reviews
Positive47.9%
Neutral16.5%
Negative35.5%

Notes Writer

All ratings7,339 ratings
Positive86.7%
Neutral5.1%
Negative8.2%
Written reviews968 reviews
Positive44.7%
Neutral15.1%
Negative40.2%

User reviews

Sticky Notes + Widget Memo

From 70 App Store ratings

What we love

  • 🚀 Easy to use
  • 👍 Helpful for organization
  • 🚀 Convenient widget
  • 🚀 Variety of note styles
  • 👍 Simple and intuitive

Room to improve

  • 🐛 Sync issues
  • 💰 Paid features required
  • 🐛 Handwriting recognition problems
  • 🐛 Notes disappearing
  • 🐛 Laggy performance

Notes Writer

From 7.3K App Store ratings

What we love

  • 🚀 Smooth writing experience
  • 💡 Versatile note-taking features
  • 🔒 Good privacy
  • 👍 Useful for various purposes (notes, PDF annotations, etc.)

Room to improve

  • 🐛 Crashes and freezes
  • 🔒 Limiting free version with paywalls
  • 🐛 Bugs with erasing, page management, and file corruption
  • 🐛 Laggy performance and slow loading times

Bugs and requests

Sticky Notes + Widget Memo

Reported bugs

4 issues
  • Widgets not loading properly
  • Handwriting not registering correctly
  • Notes not saving or syncing
  • Overlapping text and drawings

Requested features

5 requests
  • Add reminders and calendar integration
  • Allow more customization of notes (fonts, colors, layouts)
  • Improve widget functionality and customization
  • Add ability to insert images and files
  • Implement better organization tools (folders, tags, etc.)

Notes Writer

Reported bugs

4 issues
  • Notes randomly disappearing or getting corrupted
  • Inability to recover deleted documents
  • Unexpected behavior when adding/deleting pages
  • Syncing issues and broken links between documents

Requested features

4 requests
  • Add more brushes and pen customization options
  • Improve the clipping/selection tool
  • Implement OCR and handwriting search
  • Provide a Mac version

In-app purchases

1 purchases

Sticky Notes + Widget Memo

One-time1
  • Sticky Notes Pro$8.99
4 purchases

Notes Writer

Subscriptions3
  • Weekly$1.997 Days
  • Notes Writer Unlock All and AI3 Days trial$3.991 Month
  • Notes Writer Unlock All and AI3 Days trial$14.991 Year
One-time1
  • Lifetime Pro Full Unlock$14.99

Questions

Is Sticky Notes + Widget Memo free?
Sticky Notes + Widget Memo is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Notes Writer free?
Notes Writer is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Sticky Notes + Widget Memo or Notes Writer?
Notes Writer is rated higher. Sticky Notes + Widget Memo averages 2.9 out of 5 from 70 ratings, while Notes Writer averages 4.5 from 7.3K ratings.
Do Sticky Notes + Widget Memo or Notes Writer have ads?
Neither Sticky Notes + Widget Memo nor Notes Writer shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Sticky Notes + Widget Memo or Notes Writer?
Sticky Notes + Widget Memo ships an update every 3 weeks, and Notes Writer every 4 days. Most recently, Sticky Notes + Widget Memo was updated on November 2, 2026 and Notes Writer on November 13, 2026.

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