Sharing a Library

There are a few different ways to share a Library with others — using a sync service, sharing via your Workspace, or uploading to a server and using RSS for updates.

Via your Workspace Sharing and discovering Libraries is simple. Upload your document to your Workspace, click the three dots icon and select Document Settings…. Check Use as Library in the What can they do? section, then click Save Changes.

Head back to the Mac app and you’ll find all the Workspace Libraries for any team you belong to under the Libraries tab in Preferences. You can scroll through and find the Libraries you need, when you want to use the Library, just enable the Checkbox.

Using a sync service (like Dropbox or Google Drive) to share your Library is as simple as uploading the Sketch document and sharing it with the people that need it. Anyone you share your Library with will need to add the document as a Library in the Mac app. They will get a notification in the Mac app any time you update it.

Using RSS and a server to share your Library is a little more complicated. First, you’ll need to host your Library document on a server. Then, you’ll need to create an XML file like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:sparkle="http://www.andymatuschak.org/xml-namespaces/sparkle">
  <channel>
    <title>My Sketch Library</title>
    <description>My Sketch Library</description>
    <image>
      <url></url>
      <title>My Sketch Library</title>
    </image>
    <generator>Sketch</generator>
    <item>
      <title>My Sketch Library</title>
      <pubDate>Wed, 23 Jun 2019 11:19:04 +0000</pubDate>
      <enclosure url="https://example.com/my-library.sketch" type="application/octet-stream" sparkle:version="1"/>
    </item>
  </channel>
</rss>

Inside the XML file, you’ll need to edit the following:

• <title>  —  The Library’s name that you want to show in Sketch
• <image><url> — The default thumbnail URL that Sketch will attempt to use for your library. It should point to a publicly accessible image URL.
• <item> —  The information between the item tags is what you’ll want to update when you create new versions of your library. You only need one item tag within your feed.

In the the item tag, for each update you’ll need to include:

• <pubDate>  — The date the library update was published in the RFC822 format.
• <enclosure> —  The enclosure tag has three attributes: url, type & sparkle:version. The URL should point directly to your Library document’s server location, type should be “application/octet-stream” and finally sparkle:version is a number that should increment with each new update.

Make sure to serve both your XML feed and your Sketch file using https URLs.

Finally, use a tool like the Meyerweb URL encoder to encode your XML feed URL and add it on to the following:

sketch://add-library?url=

Enter the full URl (from sketch:// through to the end your encoded URL) into your browser to open the Mac app and add your Library.