Our latest update — Copenhagen — features a major redesign of Sketch’s UI. Redesigns like this don’t happen often. In fact, our last one was in 2020, when Apple launched macOS Big Sur.
Just like Big Sur, macOS Tahoe has brought about a whole new design language and — for teams like ours making pro tools — a whole new approach to consider for our UI.
With this redesign, our goal wasn’t just to help Sketch feel at home on macOS Tahoe, but also to improve functionality. Let’s dive into the details of how we’ve found that balance.
To Tahoe or not Tahoe
Once Apple’s WWDC keynote wrapped up, we immediately dived into their excellent sessions and resources to figure out what we’d adopt, adapt, or go custom with, for our redesign.
Early on in the process, we prototyped various approaches to the sidebar and Inspector, including floating options (the new default in Tahoe) and glass materials. Ultimately, we went custom here, with fixed sidebars that felt less distracting in the context of a canvas-based design tool.
An early prototype of the redesign, specifically for testing sidebars.
Another area we went custom with was document tabs. Having them run along the top of the window didn’t work well with the toolbar and ultimately felt too boxy and imposing. Instead, they now live in the sidebar, and are just as functional.
You can double-click a document tab to rename it, hover over it and click the X to close it, drag it out to create another window, or even drag into another window. You can choose between document windows and tabs in Sketch’s settings. The new default is tabs.
Copenhagen brings document tabs inline in the sidebar, right above the pages and layer lists.
We can’t talk about macOS Tahoe without mentioning Liquid Glass. As well as shipping our own glass effect soon after WWDC, we’ve adopted Liquid Glass in subtle ways in Copenhagen. You’ll find it in the toolbar, minimap and notifications at the bottom of the Canvas.
Speaking of glass, we’ve given our app icon a refresh with a subtle glass treatment too. And as a good citizen of the platform, it supports clear and tinted options via your macOS settings.
A more focused layer list
Below the new document tabs in the sidebar, we’ve given the layer list a revamp. As well as cleaning things up, we’re introducing a new feature to help with busy documents — focus mode.
Focus mode filters the layer list to show you only the layers you’ve selected, their parent container(s) and any siblings. In other words, you’ll see the layer you’re working with and their relevant context. If you select anything top-level (i.e. on the Canvas), you’ll see every layer in the layer list.
Focus mode is on by default, but you can toggle it using the button next to the search field at the bottom of the sidebar — or via the Command Bar.
Focus mode cleans up the layer list, giving you just the context you need based on what you’ve got selected.
Elsewhere in the layer list, we’ve added path lines to make it easier to see how layers, groups and containers relate to each other. We’ve also tweaked how navigating to a layer works. If you hover a layer and hold ⌥, then click the 
icon that appears, we’ll take you to that layer on the Canvas.
Path lines in the layer list give a better sense of hierarchy between regular layers and their containers.
A context-aware toolbar
With Copenhagen, we’ve introduced a new context-aware toolbar. It adapts to give you the most appropriate options based on your current selection and tool you’re using.
In our early explorations for the redesign, it became clear that the old, customizable toolbar didn’t fit well within macOS Tahoe and the other changes we were making within Sketch.
The toolbar in Copenhagen adapts automatically based on your tool choice and selection
More than that, there are now other ways to quickly access any tool you need. You can bring up the Command bar by pressing S and type to search for any tool. It’s fast and you can normally get what you need in just a few keystrokes. It also prioritizes the results you commonly select.
As well as the Command Bar, there are shortcuts for almost any tool you need, and we’ve spent time making them more visible in tooltips and menus across Sketch.
An all-new Inspector
A lot of our redesign began once WWDC had come to a close, but one area that started long before that was the Inspector. In fact, we’d been working on a complete rewrite since the beginning of 2025.
All that groundwork in the rewrite laid solid foundations that made the redesign much faster and easier. With that, this is where we’ve made some of the biggest improvements.
Panels over popovers
One of the first things you’ll notice when you work with the new Inspector is that most of the old popovers are now separate panels.
These new panels have a lot of advantages. You can move them freely around the window to bring them closer to your work. They also stay open if you change your selection and they’re still applicable, making similar changes across multiple layers more convenient.
Prototyping tools now live in their own panel instead of an Inspector tab, so you can continue designing while building your prototype. Similarly, by moving rotate copies to a panel, you no longer have to choose how many copies to create before you can adjust their position.
Prototyping is one of the many Inspector areas to be given the separate panel treatment.
We’ve got a few leftover popovers to move to panels (specifically, swapping Symbols/styles) and we’ll be bringing those over in a future update.
A more capable color panel
One new panel that deserves a special mention here is the color panel. We’ve made lots of improvements here to address the feedback we’ve received on choosing colors over the years.
First, Color Variables get their own section in this panel. Many design workflows now don’t require you to pick a custom color, but instead choose a Color Variable from a Library, so it makes sense to give Color Variables a more worthy home.
The new color panel features a lot of small improvements based on your feedback.
You can open the Color panel on the Color Variables tab by holding ⌥ as you click on any color well. In the Color Variables tab, you can start typing to search for a Color Variable, and use arrow keys and enter to select it.
You’ll find blend mode options at the bottom of the Color panel, making it clearer and easier to apply blend modes to specific colors. It’s also easier to switch between RGB, HSB and HSL values via the overflow (
) menu.
Gradient presets also get their own view, you can access this when you choose between linear, radial, and angular gradients. It’s also easier to choose between a custom color or color variable when you edit a gradient stop.
Better, custom controls
During our Inspector rewrite, we built a whole host of custom controls. With these, we could include a lot of small, but useful details that add up to an overall better experience.
You can scrub any numeric field without focusing it by dragging on its icon. Focusing a text field will now automatically select its contents, since most of the time you’ll want to replace it. Double-clicking on any slider control will reset it to its “natural” value. You can also click on any label next to a toggle switch to toggle it.
You can now scrub on any numeric field in the Inspector without focusing it first.
Finally, we’ve added lots of alternate functionality to controls when you hold ⌥. We already mentioned quickly accessing Color Variables, but you can also hold ⌥ to change the flip horizontal/vertical controls to rotate 90º left and right, or quickly remove fills and borders by clicking where their visibility toggles were.
Holding Option brings up a number of alternate controls in the new Inspector.
An upgrade for overrides
The final area of the Inspector to highlight is Symbol overrides. We’ve spent some time here making the experience of working with overrides more friendly.
Symbol previews are bigger, Color Variables have more room so you can see their name in full, and for Symbols with more than 15 overrides, we split them by Component type.
Symbols with 15 or more overrides now have them separated by Component type in the Inspector.
A whole lot of polish
Beyond the major areas of the app, there’s a lot of polish that we’ve taken the time to add. Focusing on these smaller details has always mattered to us in any update, and this redesign was no exception.
We created a new set of icons (over 700 of them) — you’ll find them everywhere from menus, to the Inspector, and beyond. In the document tabs, for example, they show you instantly whether a document is saved, edited, stored locally, in a Workspace, a Library, or template.
New icons give you a clear indication of different document types at a glance.
We’ve cleaned up many of the menus, adding shortcuts and icons wherever we could. The contextual menus in particular we’ve completely reorganized, they have more actions, logical submenus, and show shortcuts.
On the Canvas, we’ve redesigned handles, overlays and cursors. We’ve rebuilt every sheet to feel at home on macOS Tahoe. And, importantly, we’ve made sure that this release looks good, with some subtle differences, on earlier macOS versions as well.
We’ve updated the selection overlays and handles to match the look and feel of the rest of the UI.
Finally, we added a long-requested feature — the option to copy individual page and frame links to share and view in the web app.
You can now copy a link to view any page or frame in the web app — ideal for sharing.
We’ve been testing this redesign internally for months now, and had some invaluable feedback over the past few weeks from beta testers, too. Like any redesign, changes can take a moment to get used to, but we feel confident in the fact that they quickly feel natural.
What’s even more exciting is how this sets us up for the future, especially with the work we’ve done on the Inspector. For now, we’ll be iterating and improving on smaller details, but we’re excited to build on what we’ve done here in 2026.
You can get Copenhagen right now by opening the Mac app and following the update prompts, or by downloading it. Check out the release notes to see what else is new beyond the redesign.
