What’s New

Say Hello To Assistants

With this release, we’re introducing Assistants — a helping hand for your designs. Assistants can automatically check your documents to help you spot issues, stay consistent with design systems, prepare your files for collaboration, and follow your team’s rules. You can find out more, discover and download Assistants in the new Assistants Directory, or read our documentation to see how they work.

Performance improvements

We’re working hard to speed things up across the app and this release includes a few key updates. We’ve cleaned up our code around Symbols so working with them (especially in complex documents) should feel a lot more responsive. We’ve also fixed some particular performance bottlenecks around shadows and layers with background blur and saturation. There are a lot of small changes here, but they all add up to a smoother, faster Sketch.

Embed fonts in documents

With this release, we’re introducing the option to embed font files in individual documents. You can do this in any document by choosing Text > Document Fonts… and selecting the fonts you want to embed. Embedding fonts makes it easier to share documents with others and ensures that text layers render accurately — even if they don’t have the right fonts installed. It also ensures text layers render correctly whenever you view your documents on Cloud.

We’re busy putting the finishing touches on some very exciting upcoming releases, so we’ve taken a step back with this one to focus on some important bug fixes and key improvements that all add up to a better experience.

New Prototyping Scroll Effects

With this release, we’re introducing a “Maintain scroll position after click” option that preserves the position of scrolling Artboards after you click on a prototype link. With it, you can create overlay-style elements and state changes that feel more natural and don’t interrupt your flow.

Better Search

Searching for Symbols and styles is now easier and more intuitive. Fuzzy search is here, which means you no longer have to type the exact name of a Component to find what you need. We’ve also cleaned up the results to make it easier to scan through, and we’ve moved the search bar to the top of the the Components Panel, Layer List and Components Menu.

Introducing Tints

With Tints, you can change the color of an entire Symbol or group, without relying on complex workarounds and multiple Layer Styles. They’re also easy to override, which makes them great for creating icons with multiple states. Tints work best with single-color Symbols and groups that make use of multiple opacities, like icons or tabs in a menu. You’ll find the new Tints option under the Style heading in the Inspector when you select any Symbol or group.

Components Menu Improvements

Based on your feedback, we’ve completely redesigned the Components Menu to once again use the fly-out menus that you know and love. We’ll still make it easy to switch between Components from the same group and search for Components from every Library in your document, but for those of you who preferred the old menus, we’re happy to say that we’ve brought them back.

Faster Cloud uploads

With this release, uploading documents to Cloud should become a lot faster and feel a lot smoother. We’re doing all the hard work on our servers instead of on your Mac now, so if you’ve ever had your fans spin up during an upload, this should put a stop to that too.

A better way to create and save documents

When inspiration strikes, you shouldn’t have to think about whether your document is being saved to Cloud or on your Mac, so we’ve fixed that. Now, instead of choosing whether a new document should be a Cloud or local document when you create it, you’ll make that choice when you save it instead.

New Smart Layout controls

You can now make sure your Smart Layout buttons don’t become too tiny to tap and form fields never shrink too small by setting minimum dimensions. You’ll find this much-requested feature under the Layout section of the Inspector when you set a horizontal or vertical layout. And don’t worry, the option to set maximum dimensions is coming soon.