SAWAS Dashboard vs Stickies

SAWAS Dashboard is a modular desktop widget that keeps clock, system, network, notes, browser favorites, and support-link modules visible behind ordinary windows. Its system module shows live CPU and RAM use, while the network module reports current download and upload rates. It records CPU, RAM, and network history locally in SQLite every 15 seconds and displays day, week, or month charts. Favorites can read bookmarks from Chrome and Microsoft Edge profiles, with search and pinning. The local-network scanner uses ping, ARP, and reverse DNS, and can scan every 30 minutes while the PC is idle. A speed test reports ping, download, and upload, and can run on the same idle schedule using speedtest-cli. Users can add Python modules in the dashboard’s modules folder. The maker says there is no telemetry, cloud service, or sign-in, and that dashboard data stays on the PC. Its plan is free, for private and commercial use, with no ads or subscription.

Stickies is a free Windows utility for placing text and image notes on the desktop. Notes stay where positioned until closed, including after reboots, and can be resized and styled with custom fonts, colours, buttons and layouts. You can hide a note until a chosen date and time, schedule it to wake daily, weekly or monthly, and add alarms. Notes may be attached to an application, website, document or folder so they appear only when that item is on screen. Stickies transfers notes between machines over TCP/IP, an SMTP mail server or a MAPI client, and exposes an API through Windows messages. It stores data in one SQLite database file without writing to the registry. Unicode and right-to-left text are supported, with translation files for menus and dialogs. The current download supports Windows 7, 8, 10 and 11. Group Policy can control settings.