The short answer
Microsoft Sticky Notes can't lock or password-protect a note. Your options on Windows are:
- Lock the whole PC with Win+L whenever you step away. This protects everything, but only while the PC is locked.
- Use a sticky notes app that can lock single notes. Stickies (mine, $4.99 once with a 7-day free trial) and Notezilla can both do this.
- Keep real secrets in a password manager. For passwords you use often, that's still the best place.
How to lock a note in Stickies
- Open Settings and go to PIN Lock.
- Click Set up PIN and pick a 4-digit PIN.
- Write down the recovery key Stickies shows you (it looks like
STICKIES-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX) and keep it somewhere safe. - Open the note you want to protect and click the lock button at the top, press Ctrl+Shift+L, or type
/lock.
That's it. The note now asks for your PIN every time you open it, and locks again as soon as you close it or press Win+L.
Hide everything, not just the private notes
By default, the titles of locked notes stay visible so you can find them. If you'd rather show nothing at all, turn on Hide all notes until I enter my PIN in Settings → PIN Lock. Stickies then shows no notes and no titles until you type your PIN.
What the lock protects
- Someone at your unlocked PC. They can't open a locked note without the PIN.
- Someone with a copy of your notes file. Every note is already encrypted with Windows DPAPI, tied to your Windows account. Locked notes get a second layer: AES-256-GCM with a key made from your PIN (using Argon2). Without the PIN or the recovery key, nobody can read them, me included.
- Guessing. After 5 wrong PINs, Stickies makes you wait, starting at 30 seconds and doubling with each miss, up to 15 minutes.
What it doesn't protect
- Note titles, unless "Hide all notes" is on. Keep secrets out of the title.
- A note while it's open on screen. Close it when you're done, or press Win+L.
- A PC that already has malware on it. No notes app can protect you from something that reads your screen and keystrokes.
- A forgotten PIN and a lost recovery key. There's no back door, so those notes are gone. That's the trade-off for real encryption.
Why a 4-digit PIN and not a long password?
I wanted locking to be quick enough that people actually use it. The PIN keeps people at your desk out, and the wait after wrong guesses makes guessing slow. For a secret that has to survive someone copying your files and trying every PIN, a password manager is the better place.
Try PIN-locked notes free for 7 days
Stickies is $4.99 once for up to 3 PCs. No subscription, no account, and your notes never leave your PC.