stickies, disappearing regularly...

[fisherking]

ok, i use 'notes' for most things, but 'stickies' for a few important notes i only need on my mac. twice in the last few weeks, i've opened the app, to be greeted by... a blank stickie (and nothing else).

am gonna move these notes to the notes app, and abandon stickies (for now, at least).

anyone else experiencing this? am on yesterday's public beta, and the stickies were there an hour earlier...
[automerge]1573836427[/automerge]
restored from backup (the containers folder, and the stickies database), & moved everything into the notes app. anyway, wondering if others are having this issue.

meanwhile, done with stickies!

 

[fisherking]

no one else experiencing this? am trying to figure out the cause (not urgent, but...). anyway, feedback-formed apple, and again, wondering if others are seeing the issue.

 

[chris5280]

bump - can confirm this is happening with me too after upgrading to Catalina.

running OSX 10.15.2

open stickies app, type in data, close sticky, reopen - data is missing. However, I have found that waiting about 5 seconds after entering data and then closing sticky will retain the data. I can watch in Activity Monitor as the cpu has a small bump in the stickie app, which I'm guessing is recording the data. So basically closing the app too fast prevents the data from being recorded, which then opens a blank stickie the next time the app is opened.

I have 2 machines (both running 10.15.2), and this behavior is only happening on one of the machines.

On the machine with the issue:
-I have tested on a second user account and can not replicate the bug. It only happens on my primary user account.

-I booted into safe mode, and the bug persists (i.e. it is not caused by another program creating a conflict with a login process).

-I did a reinstall of Catalina (cmd + R) and the bug persists.

-Also deleted com.apple.Stickies and com.apple.StickiesMigration folders (these are automatically regenerated when the app is re-opened) to see if that would fix the problem: it didn't.

At this point I can only conclude this is a bug relative to a previous upgrade relative to my user profile that I can't seem to fix: perhaps it will be addressed/fixed by Apple in a future release if enough people comment.

 

[fisherking]

funny, it's no longer happening here (10.15.2); stickies seem to be saving (i AM copying that text elsewhere for now, as a precaution). but again, working...

 

[chris5280]

@fisherking - curious, did you do upgrade from Mojave to the initial release of Catalina? Or did you upgrade to a later version? I went from Mojave (10.14.6) directly to 10.15.2.

Trying to figure out if your problem resolved itself on its own, or if the issue went away after an upgrade from 10.15.1 to 10.15.2?

 

[fisherking]

i installed catalina on my macbook day 1. then had the problem in beta, then... no longer (in a later beta). and it seems alright in 10.15.2...

 

[chris5280]

thanks for the info. maybe my issue will get resolved in 10.15.3.

 

[fisherking]

thanks for the info. maybe my issue will get resolved in 10.15.3.

& not fixed. i just clicked on a stickies top bar to open it, and it vanished. quit, re-opened the app... gone. reporting it (again) in the feedback app.

 

[Peadogie]

Did the .2 update Friday 12/13.
I have not seen this yet ?, but using the Shift+Command+Y shortcut has not (using Catalina since the last beta) and still does not work. Pretty seriously limits the usefulness of Stickies. ?
Like you, feedback reported to Apple again.
I have resorted to using "Desktop Clippings" for temporarily saving text snippets. Not ideal.

 

[fisherking]

am just relying on the Notes app, which i use a lot. sometimes, i just need a note on my macbook, and stickies is (or was) great for that...

 

[Peadogie]

am just relying on the Notes app, which i use a lot. sometimes, i just need a note on my macbook, and stickies is (or was) great for that...

Yeah, I try to transfer stuff in a logical manner in an effort to keep my Notes.app from descending into a total state of chaos.

 

[Christa Millet]

I have Catalina 10.15.2 and my saved Stickies have disappeared twice in two days. When I close the app and reopen it, they are all gone. This is beyond aggravating.

 

[fisherking]

no issues so far, in the 10.15.3 beta (but i keep backing up my stickies anyway). hopefully all is well...

 

[Heat_Fan89]

No issues here and i'm on 10.15.2 with a 2018 Mini

 

[jennytisme]

my stickies keep getting erased. since updating to Catalina 10.15.2. I was able to get my old stickies back only for them to disappear again. this is so frustrating.

 

[Gwyneth Llewely]

Oh! And I always thought that this was a problem that only I had (due to some stupid things I did on early Catalina betas...). Hmm. I still haven't lost all my Stickies because I used AirSync for Stickies to send all the Stickies to the iPhone & iPad (and Dropbox!)... unfortunately, this is a one-way sync, so the only way to get them back is to copy & paste them, one by one, from the iPhone/iPad back into the Mac... which takes eons (and, according to this thread, it seems that they can easily get 'lost' again).

I also tended to use Notes a lot (especially after the issues with Stickies...), but these days I'm giving Agenda a try. It's been a bit overrated (lots of prizes, awards for the UI design, etc.) and I thought that it would be much better than it actually is, but it sort of works — just not as easily as Stickies...

 

[shrimppesto]

I am able to reproduce this problem.

It seems like when you modify any Stickies note, Stickies will rewrite the entire file:
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Stickies/Data/Library/Stickies/.SavedStickiesState

If you quit Stickies -while- it is rewriting said file, this file ends up emptied of its contents, leading to loss of all Stickies notes in the app. Restoring said file (and/or the entire ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Stickies folder) from Time Machine seems to fix the issue.

If you want your data back, and you don't have a backup, you can go to ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Stickies/Data/Library/Stickies/, open each *.rtfd folder, and extract the TXT.rtf files within. Voila-- there's your data, it's all still there, it's just that the references to the data (stored in .SavedStickiesState) have been lost.

I submitted a bug report to Apple w/ some more detailed information in the hopes that they will be able to fix this soon.

 

[fisherking]

i have not lost anything since around december 16, when i last posted about the issue... just mentioning....

 

[bgrupczy]

I am able to reproduce this problem.

It seems like when you modify any Stickies note, Stickies will rewrite the entire file:
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Stickies/Data/Library/Stickies/.SavedStickiesState

If you quit Stickies -while- it is rewriting said file, this file ends up emptied of its contents, leading to loss of all Stickies notes in the app. Restoring said file (and/or the entire ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Stickies folder) from Time Machine seems to fix the issue.

If you want your data back, and you don't have a backup, you can go to ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Stickies/Data/Library/Stickies/, open each *.rtfd folder, and extract the TXT.rtf files within. Voila-- there's your data, it's all still there, it's just that the references to the data (stored in .SavedStickiesState) have been lost.

I submitted a bug report to Apple w/ some more detailed information in the hopes that they will be able to fix this soon.

THANK YOU!! I can confirm this evidence. My .SavedStickiesState only had 3 out of the dozen of my stickies. So mine was not completely empty. But all of the .rtfd files were there. I transferred them all to Notes.

 

[notafinga]

I have this issue. I thought I had done something to clear the stickies the first time it occurred, but it happened again today and cleared out some very important notes...just two blank stickies. It happened to be stickies I created after the Catalina upgrade. The rtfd files in the library are blank, as well. No time machine backup?.