How to Use Digital Stickers in GoodNotes: A Beginner Guide

Digital stickers are the fastest way to make a digital planner look intentional instead of improvised. But most people get stuck in the same place: they download a pack, open GoodNotes, and then… nothing happens, because a PNG does not behave like a sticker you can peel. This guide covers the three ways to place a sticker, how to build a reusable sticker book, and the size settings that keep stickers sharp. It works the same way in Notability, Noteshelf, Xodo and OneNote.

What a digital sticker actually is

A digital sticker is a PNG image with a transparent background. The transparency is the whole point: when you place it, only the artwork shows, not a white square. A good sticker pack is also die-cut, meaning the artwork carries a soft white edge so it reads like a real sticker sitting on the page.

Resolution matters more than people expect. A sticker exported at 1024 × 1024 px can be scaled up to a full cover page and still look clean. A 300 px sticker looks fine in a thumbnail and terrible on a monthly spread. If a shop does not state the pixel size, assume the worst.

Method 1: the Image tool (fastest)

Unzip the download on your iPad (Files app) or on your computer and put the PNGs somewhere you can reach.
Open a notebook in GoodNotes and tap the Image tool in the toolbar.
Pick the sticker from Photos or Files.
Tap the sticker once to select it, then drag a corner to resize or use two fingers to rotate.

This is the right method when you need one sticker, once. It is the wrong method if you plan to use the same pack every week, because you will be hunting through Files every time.

Method 2: build a sticker book (best long term)

A sticker book is just a notebook that holds your stickers, so they are always one tap away in the Element tab.

Create a new notebook called something like Sticker Book.
Import the whole pack with the Image tool, a few stickers per page, with space between them.
In that notebook, open the Element tab and add the notebook as an element.
From now on, in any notebook, open Element and drag a sticker straight onto the page.

This is the single biggest quality-of-life upgrade in digital planning. Build it once per pack and you never open Files again.

Method 3: lasso and copy

If you already placed a sticker on a page and want it again, select it with the lasso tool, copy, and paste into another notebook or page. Useful for repeating elements like a checkbox row or a banner, and it keeps the exact size you already set.

Sizing: how big should a sticker be?

Icon / habit tracker accent: 40–80 px wide on an iPad page.
Planner sticker (washi, banner, checklist): roughly the width of one column.
Cover or monthly accent: half a page or more — this is where a 1024 px file earns its keep.

A useful test: zoom to 100% and look at the edge of the artwork. If you see stair-stepping, the source file was too small. If the edge stays smooth, the file is doing its job.

Five mistakes that make stickers look pasted-on

Scaling a small PNG up. Blurry edges read as cheap. Buy packs that state 1024 px.
Stretching instead of scaling. Hold the corner so the aspect ratio stays locked.
Mixing too many palettes. Two or three colours across a spread is enough; a pack with a fixed palette does this for you.
Putting a sticker on top of handwriting. Place it in the margin or leave a gap in the layout.
No white edge. Stickers without a die-cut edge visually merge into the page and look like clip art.

Does this work outside GoodNotes?

Yes. Because the format is a plain transparent PNG, the same files work in Notability, Noteshelf, Xodo, OneNote, Notion, Procreate and Canva. On iPhone, save the sticker to Photos and insert it from there. On desktop, drag the PNG straight into the page.

Where to start

If you are building a sticker book from scratch, pick one functional set and one seasonal set, then add more only when a page actually needs it:

Functional Planner Sticker Kit — trackers, checklists, banners
Cozy Autumn Digital Stickers — watercolour fall set
Boho Wellness Digital Stickers — calm icons for habits and self care
Kawaii Food Digital Stickers — meal plans and food diaries
Retro Fall Digital Stickers — 70s shapes and warm colour
Christmas Holiday Digital Stickers — December pages

Or take all five seasonal and lifestyle kits at once with the Complete Sticker Bundle (90 stickers, 5 kits) if you would rather not buy them one at a time.

Quick answers

Why does my sticker have a white box around it?

The file is a JPG, or the PNG was flattened. Only PNG files keep transparency. Re-download the pack and make sure you are inserting the PNG, not a screenshot.

Can I recolor a sticker?

In GoodNotes, no — stickers are images, not vector shapes. Recolor in Procreate or Canva first, then re-import.

Can I use these stickers commercially?

Inside your own planner pages, yes. Reselling or redistributing the files is not allowed — that includes sharing a sticker book notebook that contains the artwork.

Do stickers slow down a notebook?

Large notebooks with hundreds of images can get heavy. Importing a pack into a sticker book and copying single stickers onto pages keeps notebooks lighter than importing the whole pack into every notebook.

Written by the team at tapilala — we draw small digital sticker sets for people who plan on an iPad and want pages to look calm rather than crowded.