SketchBox – Amazing Sticky Notes Manager for Your Mac

Without a doubt, there must have been at least one occasion on which we all used a sticky note to write something down. Most offices in the world use them, and I am pretty sure they are in high demand even at home. They are very useful, as it’s extremely easy to just write whatever on them and then stick them anywhere (which is also the thing that has made them so popular), from your refrigerator, on a PC, near the phone, or on a document, to the bathroom mirror, etc. Being so useful, they also made an appearance in the virtual world, and are now available for your Mac. SketchBox offers anything that a virtual sticky note could offer, and even more.

The Looks

SketchBox has a very attractive looking interface. The menu is as simple as can be, allowing you to create a new sticky or to remove one. You can create as many sticky notes as you want, and SketchBox will present them in a thumbnail view, nicely arranged and ready to do their job. The thing that catches your eye the first time you open the application is the beautiful and lightly colored stickies. Depending on how many stickies you have created, you can resize them from the bottom left corner of the application, so that they will be nicely displayed on your monitor.

The Works

Creating a new sticky note is very easy, and you can do this in two ways: either click on “new sticky” in the top left corner of the application, or click on the “+” button in the bottom left corner. A new sticky will instantly appear in thumbnail view, and will be ready to take your notes. Deleting a sticky note is as simple as creating new one. Once again, there are two ways available of doing this: click the “remove” or the “-” button in the main window of the application.

Every sticky note that you create with SketchBox has three major functions: you can draw, write and set an alarm timer on each. The drawing function is standard and simple. Select the pen icon in the bottom left corner of the sticky, and start drawing whatever you want. Near the pen, you will see the eraser (because every drawing application must have an eraser as well), while near the eraser, you can find the option to select the thickness of the pencil. The writing function is as uncomplicated as the drawing one, offering the possibility to increase and decrease font size, and allowing you to apply basic formatting like bold, italic and underline.

The alarm timer is somehow surprising as a function for a sticky note. However, I mean surprising in a good way, because every time you write down a note, you also can also set a deadline for it. For example, you could write down the birth date of a new acquaintance of yours, and the alarm timer will make sure you won’t forget about it. Setting the alarm is, again, a fun and easy task. You can accomplish it by dragging the mouse, or by scrolling the mouse wheel. All three functions of a sticky note, drawing, writing and setting an alarm timer, can be used simultaneously. Create a new sticky, write down the information you’ll need later, and set the timer so that you don’t forget about it. Every sticky can be resized by dragging with the mouse from the bottom right corner of it.

The best feature of SketchBox, the one that I personally like the most, is the Snapshot function. If you want to catch a part of your screen, just select a sticky, resize it so it fits to capture the information you want, and click on the “camera” icon in the bottom right corner. And, just like that, you have captured useful information without having to copy/paste and format the text. In case you want to erase a sticky, just enable the drop-down menu on the upper left corner, which enables you to Clear Canvas, Crop Image, Remove ScreenShot, Save Image to Desktop, and adjust the Window Level (Normal, Desktop or Always On Top).

The Preference window of SketchBox will allow you to customize the application and, in doing so, to use it anyway you want. When you create a new sticky, it can be placed at the top or at bottom, you can set the default layer to be drawing, writing or timer, while the default size is whatever you want it to be. You can also select a default color for the stickies you create and for the background window. As for the timer, it can be set to analog or digital, and repetitive or not. From the Tablet tab under the Preference window, you can check or uncheck the “Enable pressure sensitivity” and “Smooth lines,” and also opt whether you want to be notified when a new update of SketchBox is available.

The Good

The Bad

The Truth