Maximum number of Stickies?

[gogreen1]

What, if any, is the limit on the number of Stickies one can create? I see plenty of information in Google searches on the size limit of text in Stickies, but I've found nothing on the limit on the number of Stickies one can create.

 

[casperes1996]

I don't really see why there would be one. I mean, within reason. But we're probably somewhere around 2^64

 

[LizKat]

I don't really see why there would be one. I mean, within reason. But we're probably somewhere around 2^64

🙂 Not knowing for sure, and more importantly how and when you get to find out the hard way, are just two more of those good reasons for making backups. More than one kind of backup and on assorted media.

 

[gogreen1]

@ casperes1996: What does 2^64 mean?

@LizKat: I do make backups. Plenty of 'em.

Thanks.

 

[DeltaMac]

2 to 64th power. The (^) symbol is used to denote the mathematical exponent.
(pretty large number - which I would doubt, probably more like 2^32 😎 )
I think casperes1996 is trying to say that the number of stickies could be more than would be useful to anyone.
Or, I think the limit would be in your ability to keep stickies organized in some practical way.

Think about it... If you had "only" 100,000 stickies, how would you even use them?
I only have about 40 stickies, and I still have to take some time to discover where I left that little bit of info.
But, then I built up my stickies mostly during the time when I was running Jaguar (!), and might add/edit stickies once or twice a year, at most. I have some REALLY ancient Mac info there, notes about extensions in OS 9, lots of links to sites that no longer exist, etc. I gotta clean that stuff up one of these days...

 

[gogreen1]

Thank you, DeltaMac. Yeah, I was asking mainly out of curiosity, not for a practical reason. Yup, that could be a lot of stickies. 😱

I've recently gone to Macs from having Windows computers. I like Stickies. I use them to jot down ideas I think of that I intend to act on later, reminders, information that may later go into Notes (for more permanence) or Documents (for even more permanence). Stickies is my repository of items to be sorted. It's convenient and fast, and increases my productivity.

 

[DeltaMac]

I think of stickies in the same way that I use an office bulletin board (or an idea board, whatever). It's always a good idea to review that pile of sticky notes that you seem to put everywhere, and weed out the ones that are outdated, or simply no longer useful. Well, at least that's my theory - that I try to do, while I remember what all those notes actually meant. I tend to write down numbers and codes without actually labeling them in any way, so I have all these source-less, useless bunches of numbers, etc on little slips of paper. Maybe you don't do that - good for you 😉

 

[LizKat]

What I don't like (any more) about Stickies is what I don't like about a lot of proprietary info-storage setups, namely that they are in one forever-burgeoning database, so if I add one sticky that says "the Kaffe Fassett fabrics bought in November are stored with the Alexander Henry stuff for now" then the Time Machine or CCC or whatever software dutifully backs up a truckload of static stuff for something newly added that by itself takes less space than a tweet.

Once I got the El Capitan OS onto a laptop, I decided to just run scratchpad text docs, open one for a day on a desktop space of its own, let it autosave edits and use spotlight to find stuff later on. Also when I felt that Notes was fairly robust, I started using that for special cases that I might want to update and access from multiple devices, but I still habitually throw a lot of notes and random references into plaintext documents used as scratchpads on my MBP. Sure a lot of my scratchpad content gets transferred to proper spreadsheets or some other form of database at some point, and then they're redundant, but at least I can find them in a pinch.

It doesn't bother me in the least to have completely unrelated info stashed into documents organized by no more than the date the info happened to connect with my brain. When I want to look for something I look for it and don't care what else is with it when I find it.

The point is to have the info stashed away where as long as an operating system comes with a plaintext processor and ability to provide access to a search tool, I'm good to go no matter what OS or hardware I'm running with.

It's funny to think about that now when I, like a lot of other people, was entranced by the idea that I could drag and drop certain documents to certain folders when Macintosh came along, instead of typing arcane commands to shove them around in those old DOS directories. Now like a lot of other people I just throw everything into a collection of junk drawers, and use a search tool later to find the right fork for whatever is today's salad. Who needs keywords when the phrase itself is key and content at once. Sometimes less is more, and minimal is best of all.

 

[casperes1996]

2 to 64th power. The (^) symbol is used to denote the mathematical exponent.
(pretty large number - which I would doubt, probably more like 2^32 😎 )
I think casperes1996 is trying to say that the number of stickies could be more than would be useful to anyone.
Or, I think the limit would be in your ability to keep stickies organized in some practical way.

Think about it... If you had "only" 100,000 stickies, how would you even use them?
I only have about 40 stickies, and I still have to take some time to discover where I left that little bit of info.
But, then I built up my stickies mostly during the time when I was running Jaguar (!), and might add/edit stickies once or twice a year, at most. I have some REALLY ancient Mac info there, notes about extensions in OS 9, lots of links to sites that no longer exist, etc. I gotta clean that stuff up one of these days...

My assumption of something along the lines of 2^64 was based on the maximum size of an unsigned only positive integer in a 64-bit system. However, you're right that my estimate is probably overshooting the mark by a long shot, as, whilst it would be true for any non-glitched reason, only coding for positive integers would make the Sticky software more error-prone, should a weird state error occur. So yeah, 2^32 is more likely. Which to everyone not used to doing binary powers, is just over 4 billion stickies......
[doublepost=1517630748][/doublepost]OK; I have a few additions to make - First off, the above estimate I make goes by the assumption that the Stickies app keeps a variable with the number of open Stickies - now I see no reason to actually do that, which would mean the number of actual stickies would be kernel or RAM limited instead of the above (virtual RAM, not just physical - i.e. Swap file included).
So here are a few more things to consider.

A) There likely is a limit to how many windows the Window Server can handle, since it needs to be able to place them nicely in Mission Control/Exposé. Now I assume this limit is rather high, and may be higher if you minimise some Stickies or have them in multiple Spaces (virtual desktops)

2) Unix based systems like macOS, per default, have a maximum amount of open file descriptors per user per process. So if Stickies doesn't open a new process for each new Sticky, and we assume each Sticky has its own file descriptor this limit would likely be the first we'd reach. This can be changed by manual intervention to increase the limit, if I recall correctly, using launchctl, but if nothing is changed this limit would be reached. If however, each new Sticky opens a new process for its new file descriptor, we would run into the processes per user limitation, which per default is 709 (processes belonging to a specific user). Again this value can be changed.

III) If for some reason Stickies itself has got a limit to the number of Stickies the app can hold at once, there would be ways of bypassing this limit, by running a second instance of the Stickies app, with its own file structure for its own separate Stickies. i however doubt there is such a limit specifically to the Stickies app tha doesn't come from somewhere else.

 

[gogreen1]

I think of stickies in the same way that I use an office bulletin board (or an idea board, whatever). It's always a good idea to review that pile of sticky notes that you seem to put everywhere, and weed out the ones that are outdated, or simply no longer useful. Well, at least that's my theory - that I try to do, while I remember what all those notes actually meant.

That's exactly what I do.

 

[monkeyfun14]

I have mostly abandoned using Stickies because the database is machine specific (not portable). One analogy would be the refrigerator.

Let's say I keep a grocery shopping list on a physical Post-It note on my fridge, adding items as I think of them. Perhaps I think of something to add to the list while I'm at work; I have to remember when I get home to add it to the list. What if I forget to peel the Post-It off my fridge before I head off to the grocery store? Now I'm stuck trying to remember what was on the sticky.

With Notes and cloud services, I can create a shopping list that can be shared on multiple devices.

The only time I use Stickies these days is as a short term cut-and-paste scratchpad. I don't put any real ideas or thoughts on Stickies anymore since they aren't portable. Whatever I put on a Sticky nowadays is usually no longer needed the next time I open up the Stickies program, basically disposable information (just like the way I treat physical Post-It notes).

 

[casperes1996]

I have mostly abandoned using Stickies because the database is machine specific (not portable). One analogy would be the refrigerator.

Let's say I keep a grocery shopping list on a physical Post-It note on my fridge, adding items as I think of them. Perhaps I think of something to add to the list while I'm at work; I have to remember when I get home to add it to the list. What if I forget to peel the Post-It off my fridge before I head off to the grocery store? Now I'm stuck trying to remember what was on the sticky.

With Notes and cloud services, I can create a shopping list that can be shared on multiple devices.

The only time I use Stickies these days is as a short term cut-and-paste scratchpad. I don't put any real ideas or thoughts on Stickies anymore since they aren't portable. Whatever I put on a Sticky nowadays is usually no longer needed the next time I open up the Stickies program, basically disposable information (just like the way I treat physical Post-It notes).

To anybody using Stickies who'd like to switch to this workflow, in the File menu for Stickies, there's an option to "Export all stickies to Notes" 🙂