Our favorite features from 2024 — and what’s next
Join us as we highlight our favorite features from 2024 and take a look at what’s coming in the new year.
As we get close to the end of the year, we’re reflecting on some of the features we’ve shipped in 2024 — and what’s to come in 2025. This year has been truly special for us, we’ve been able to work and ship long-awaited updates, while laying the groundwork for what’s next. There’s plenty to cover, so let’s jump right in!
New tools to make your prototypes shine
This year we focused on something many of you had been asking for: improving our prototyping experience. Thanks to our new prototype player, which we launched earlier in the year, we’ve finally been able to ship tools that significantly improve how you create and share prototypes in Sketch.
In our latest release, we shared Smart Animate — a new way to add animations to your prototypes and make them more realistic. Smart Animate automatically animates changes in the position, size, rotation and shape of layers with matching names and includes duration and easing controls to help you make interactions feel exactly like you want them to. And because a picture is worth a thousand words, we’ve put together a few examples so you can discover different ways Smart Animate can work for you.
Earlier in the year, we added hover and press interactions alongside the classic tap/click, giving you even more ways to trigger your overlays. We also made it possible to show or hide specific layers, groups or Symbols with custom layer visibility and added the option to toggle a layer’s visibility on click in prototypes — great for things like checkboxes or toggle switches.
We also added scroll areas within Artboards, so you can make your prototypes scroll in any direction — a game-changer for things like rows or maps.
And when it comes to sharing prototypes, we’ve also worked on a few improvements to help keep feedback more focused and organized. You can now share a client-friendly view without toolbars and navigation, and add or read comments directly on prototypes, keeping everything in one place and making it even easier to action or discuss feedback.
Supporting your workflow with Command Bar and Minimap
Alongside prototyping updates, this year we shipped two new features to make your workflow faster and more efficient: Command Bar and a Minimap. The Command Bar gives you a quick way to find and run any action in Sketch by pressing ⌘K — this includes any action you’d normally find in the menu bar or activate with a shortcut (including any that come from plugins). Plus, it learns your preferences over time and prioritizes results accordingly, making it even more convenient.
The Command Bar began as a pet project started outside of our normal project time. Sketch has tons of functionality, and we wanted a way to more quickly surface all those actions. We had a proof of concept working in a couple of weeks, and then over time we polished it into what you see today. I and others in the team have always had a soft spot for Mac launcher apps, or for Mac apps that include good in-app “command bars,” so bringing the Command Bar to Sketch was a special project for us.
— Alasdair Baxter, Mac Developer
The Minimap, which also started as a side project, gives you an overview of your Canvas, making it easier to visualize large documents, navigate them and always know where you are in the design. It’s a simple way to see your whole Canvas at a glance and quickly jump to specific parts of the design.
A web app UI refresh and a better handoff experience
Over on the web app, we focused on making the experience better through a big UI redesign. Our goal has been to put the design in the center, reduce noise and make navigating the web app feel less overwhelming. We’ve redesigned the sidebar to give the full Canvas view more space, improved the notifications view to help you stay up to date with your Workspace documents, and simplified the information hierarchy — among many other details.
The effort to update the web app’s UI started as a quick exercise to match the web app design with the Mac app and the marketing site. However, it quickly evolved into an opportunity to rethink the overall experience including long-pending ideas and improvements while keeping an experimental mindset.
We also put some focus back on the handoff experience, making it easier for developers to grab what they need. You no longer need to set up exports in the Mac app first — developers can now easily grab any layer, in any format, right away. We’ve also expanded Design Token exports to include Text and Layer Styles, making it even easier to download your design tokens or share them via link. To wrap it all up, inspecting a design now happens in full Canvas view, which gives developers all the context to understand how things work in the design.
Working on Design Token exports has been a personal highlight for me. It’s not a flashy, headline-grabbing feature that screams, “Look at this big launch!” but it is genuinely useful and a time saver. Before this improvement, syncing colors between our design system and the TypeScript codebase was a manual, tedious process that would lead to oversights and delays. We realized we could improve this pain point and come up with a solution that would both improve our internal workflow and help customers at the same time.
— Inês Carvalho, Front-end developer
And that’s not all…
These are just some of the highlights we’ve shipped this year, but there’s plenty more we’ve worked on. You can now use Foresight when tidying your layers, choose which Artboards to export as PDFs, use Color Variables in gradients, easily swap Libraries or use Sketch in Spanish. And if you’re part of our Business plan, we’ve introduced the option to archive projects and assign pre-made groups to better manage document access. Take a look at sketch.com/updates for the complete list or if you’re into the nitty gritty, check the Mac app release notes.
Sketch in 2025: what’s next
Looking ahead at the new year, there’s plenty to be excited about. While we can’t share all the details just yet, here’s what we can say about our next big release of the year.
Starting with one of the most requested features: we’re bringing an auto layout/flexbox-like feature to Sketch. Head over to the community forum to watch product manager, Paulo Pereira, run you through how things are shaping up. As part of this project, we’re evolving Artboards to be more flexible and help you do more with fewer layers. Artboards will soon be nestable containers with full styling and layout support — among plenty of other improvements to layer styling.
We’re also making Command Bar even better, adding new actions and making it possible to insert and replace Components straight away — and much more. And one last thing before we wrap up, we’re working on nestable Projects, along with the option to archive individual documents, to help you keep your Workspace even more organized.
Take a look at sketch.com/roadmap to view everything we’re exploring and working on right now.
Once again, thank you for being by our side for another year. This year we released version 100, a milestone we couldn’t have reached without your support. We feel so proud and honored that you choose Sketch to make your projects come to life. And a special shoutout to everyone over on the community forum giving feedback and cheering us along the way. Here’s to another year together!
