As 2023 attracts to a detailed, it looks like time to have a look again at the whole lot we’ve shipped in Sketch over the previous 12 months — and there’s quite a bit to cowl! So, let’s take a tour of what we’ve completed this yr.
Taking an enormous leap with Sensible Structure
Certainly one of our targets for the Mac app in 2023 was to take a significant leap with Sensible Structure. Because the yr involves an finish, we’re fairly comfortable to say we’ve completed simply that.
We began by making Sensible Structure’s present conduct extra dependable and predictable, particularly how spacing collapses whenever you hid a nested Image. We additionally improved conduct for various structure instructions. Then, we shipped a brand new experimental options menu — giving everybody an opportunity to try to share suggestions on our future Sensible Structure enhancements.
All year long, whereas we tackled updates in different areas of Sketch, our Sensible Structure work continued. We polished up what already existed and honed in on our objective; to not simply make Sensible Structure extra dependable, however break it free from Symbols.
In November, we launched a significant replace and our largest leap with Sensible Structure but. Sensible Structure is now accessible wherever you want it — from easy teams, to complete Artboards. It opens up an entire new world of flexibility and comfort, all whereas robotically preserving your structure as your designs evolve.
Apart from making Sensible Structure accessible in all places, we additionally made it simpler to make use of. We added extra keyboard shortcuts, up to date structure settings, improved Foresight assist (for previewing adjustments), and we made it doable insert a layer right into a structure just by dragging it into a gaggle.
We’re pleased with what we’ve achieved with Sensible Structure in 2023 — the outcomes converse for themselves — and we owe lots of due to the sensible discussion board members who gave us invaluable suggestions alongside the best way. Thanks!
Closing the suggestions loop
For a very long time, we’ve had a easy means of sharing suggestions in Sketch. You’d share a hyperlink to a design within the net app and collaborators may depart suggestions as feedback in a sidebar. This yr, we thought it was time to take issues up a notch.
As we speak, you can provide, obtain and talk about suggestions within the Mac app as you’re designing, in our View & Mirror app on the go, and naturally within the net app. Higher nonetheless, you are able to do all of it proper within the context of your designs — by pinning these feedback on to the Canvas.
For purchasers and collaborators, annotating designs like that is way more environment friendly than taking screenshots and sharing suggestions through e-mail. For designers, seeing feedback on the Canvas within the Mac app, makes it easy to work with suggestions with out context switching.
To actually shut the suggestions loop, we added the choice to resolve feedback. Not solely does resolving feedback cover them from the Canvas by default, making it simpler to view or edit designs themselves, however it additionally serves as a transparent indication to your collaborators that you simply’ve thought of their feedback and closed the dialogue.
Bringing Sketch to much more screens
2022 noticed us ship an all-new iPhone app which went quite a bit additional than our earlier efforts, providing you with entry to each doc in your Workspace from anyplace. Higher nonetheless, these paperwork are all the time updated with the newest model.
With Sketch — View & Mirror, there’s no want to hook up with your Mac or be sure to’ve transferred a doc with the newest adjustments. They’re all the time there, whether or not you’re catching up on the newest adjustments whilst you journey, shortly sharing suggestions, or demoing the newest prototype to a consumer.
For our subsequent step, we wished to convey View & Mirror to the iPad. But it surely wasn’t only a case of scaling up the iPhone app. We went all-out and constructed a full Canvas view for the iPad. This was no small feat, however we’re extremely pleased with the outcomes — with the ability to straight navigate via your designs such as you would within the Mac app, on a big iPad Professional display screen, is admittedly fairly magical.
We additionally hung out on function parity, including full canvas view to the iPhone and doc mirroring to the iPad. Mix this with assist for Apple’s handoff function, which makes it straightforward to open the doc in your iPhone or iPad that you simply’re at the moment enhancing within the Mac app, and mirroring has by no means been extra handy — or dependable!
To wrap issues up, we added offline mode, so you possibly can carry on viewing a doc on these prepare journeys with patchy Wi-Fi. Lastly, we made it doable to open and browse native paperwork you retain in Apple’s Information app (or a third-party service like Dropbox).
Constructing a fair higher Workspace
Storing paperwork in your Sketch Workspace comes with lots of advantages. Apart from making it straightforward to entry your recordsdata anyplace you register to Sketch, it unlocks options like real-time collaboration, annotations on the Canvas, developer handoff, and extra. With that, we wished to spend time this yr making Workspaces even higher.
For those who make full use of your Workspace, it seemingly means you have got lots of recordsdata to flick through. To assist with that, we added Collections — one other stage of group inside your Tasks. Very like Tasks, we designed Collections to be as workflow-agnostic as doable, so you possibly can group and arrange paperwork in any means that is sensible to you.
On prime of Collections, we added new filtering and sorting choices to the online app, making it simpler to seek out the precise doc you want. In the meantime within the Mac app, we launched a redesigned save dialog, which takes full benefit of Collections and provides higher search, navigation, and previews.
Again on the internet app, we gave doc share settings a significant overhaul. The redesigned modal has three clear tabs, making it simpler to set who you share your designs with, and what they’ll entry.
Introducing Figma imports, Templates and extra
Amongst a few of the greater adjustments we’ve made to Sketch throughout 2023, we’ve made loads of quality-of-life enhancements which might be value speaking about. Listed below are just some of them.
At first of the yr, we added assist for importing Figma recordsdata. Now, switching instruments is straightforward as dragging your .fig docs onto our app icon. We additionally open sourced the underlying file converter for others to make use of and assist us enhance on.
Whereas Sketch’s infinite canvas affords infinite flexibility, it might probably additionally spell infinite stress should you’re undecided the place to start out. To assist, we added over 200 design templates, masking the whole lot from product mockups to Kanban boards. In addition to being helpful for rookies, they’re simply as helpful for saving time on creating frequent property like social posts.
You may also now mark paperwork in your Workspace as templates that everybody you collaborate with can use. Creating your individual templates can dramatically pace onboarding for brand new workforce members with a constant base for brand new recordsdata.
Creating your individual Workspace templates pairs properly with a brand new possibility we shipped to allow Libraries on a per-document foundation. Collectively, they imply you possibly can set somebody up with the precise doc construction and simply the Libraries they want, in order that they’ll be capable to shortly discover and use the precise Symbols and kinds of their designs.
For these of you who care about naming your layers, we’ve added highly effective multi-layer renaming. With modifier tokens, choices to match and rename parts of layer names, and even regex assist, there’s lots of flexibility right here and the potential to save lots of lots of time, too.
Lastly, we’ve made a some large enhancements to choice and dragging — there’s quite a bit to speak about right here (a lot we made an entire video about it) — from extra indicators whenever you’ve chosen layers inside a bigger Image, to with the ability to maintain X to pull a marquee choice with out transferring the layer you’re at the moment hovering over. You’ll actually really feel the distinction right here.
Coming again to the Mac App Retailer
There’s a lot extra we may cowl on this publish, however only one thing more we’ve got to say. We’re very excited to be again on the Mac App Retailer. This was a very long time coming and we’re comfortable to supply one other alternative in the case of getting Sketch, alongside our personal subscriptions and Mac-only licenses.
Apple have been additionally sort sufficient to provide us a write-up, detailing what they love about Sketch — test it out!
It’s been one other busy yr, and we’re pleased with what we’ve been capable of ship. We’ll be again in 2024 with a lot extra. Within the meantime, thanks for all of your assist and for persevering with to make unimaginable issues with Sketch — we love seeing the work you do.
As ever, we’re over locally discussion board chatting all issues Sketch — whether or not it’s essential to some assist, you’ve obtained an concept or a function, otherwise you simply need to share one thing you’ve made, we’d like to see you there.