Back to Sketch after 5 years - Feedback and questions

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I recently started a new job, and the Design team works in Sketch. I’ve been using Figma for the past five years, and the last time I opened Sketch was in 2019. I was surprised to find that Sketch is currently missing some standard features.

What I miss most from Figma:

  • Auto-layout and all its features (as you all know). I’m really looking forward to this being released. What’s the timeline?
  • The ability to have artboards within artboards, and to style artboards (I hear this is coming in v102 so that’s great!)
  • Easily creating an instance of a symbol (keyboard shortcut, or action in the symbol menu - as requested here)
  • Variants for symbols (Symbols in Sketch are so messy and inconsistent, but I saw this is coming per your public roadmap)
  • Cropping/editing images (also planned in Sketch 102 if I’m correct)
  • Iterative naming of duplicates (for example, if I name something “item 1,” duplicates would automatically be named “item 2, 3, 4,” instead of “item 1 copy 1,” “item 1 copy 2,” etc.)

What makes my work painful in Sketch:

  • The text cursor is so slow, and text fields twitch when I edit them.
  • Random 0.X px values are added to the position of layers (even with the “Fix layers and points to pixel bound” setting activated). This drives me crazy and wastes so much time. Am I doing something wrong here?!
  • The Mirror app downloads the files to my phone when I want to mirror a screen on my device.
  • When I create a symbol, it is sent somewhere unknown…
  • Every time I open a file, I’m sent to the middle of nowhere and have to press Command+1 to see the layers.
  • Smart Layout is unpredictable and very hard to use for someone coming from Auto-layout. You never know what you’re going to get!
  • Zooming in/out often freezes when switching between files.
  • The lack of resources online for using Sketch. I didn’t find many advanced tutorials, and it feels like there’s not much out there on how to do things in Sketch. The ones I found are pretty basic. Any recommendations for a YouTube channel or other resources?

I love my new job, but I do feel somewhat handicapped while designing. I understand that it takes time to adjust to a new tool, but I’d appreciate knowing if some of these issues can be resolved, and what upcoming features are planned in the near future for Sketch. Thanks!

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I’ll answer what I know and throw in some opinions as someone who has also recently returned to sketch

From what I can tell, nested artboards is not something they’re looking to do. I think the idea is they want to add more “abilities” to groups, so they can do more nested artboard style things, if that makes sense. Then it’s just a naming/nomenclature thing. I’d personally prefer if groups could behave like artboards and still have the separation of concern, one thing that was annoying in Figma was the existence of groups when 99% you just want to nest an artboard. Makes more sense to me that a “Group” is a way of combining things that fit in an artboard, but have a lot of the capabilities that Figma nested boards do. Don’t quote me on that, it does seem to be the vibe from the team, but they’d have to confirm.

Cmd+D? Or do you mean something else?

Not sure the status of this, but it’s something I’ve asked for too. For now the best way to think of sketch symbols is a different workflow. Imagine its instance swaps all the way down. And you just use name nesting to sort them. It actually has some upsides and does prevent overcomplicating symbols, however I think variants would be better, I also think the methodology from Figma could be improved upon rather than copied wholesale.

You can do this today, the issue is crops are permanent, I put in a request to have it work in more the way you’d expect from Figma and it was well received, would love to see this!

I’ve also raised some issues with this workflow. When first creating symbols there is a checkbox called “Send to symbols page” which creates a new page and automatically moves every subsequent symbol there. If you uncheck this the first time you create one, all subsequent symbols are left in place, just like figma. I think there’s some issues with this, but I do also fundamentally like automatically moving symbols, as I always keep at least component page in Figma, see here for more info "Send symbol to symbols page" inconsistency - #6 by Ash

I don’t think I’ve experienced this.

Agreed. I see what smart layout is supposed to be on a conceptual level and in principle I like it. In practice I think it’s presented too simply and ends up really unpredictable. It’s quite nice for basic layouts though and sketching stuff out. Actually faster than auto layouts in those scenarios. I asssuuummme it’s a 103 feature, so next year at some point. Someone internally will give you a better answer.

A lot of the older videos are still relevant, as the core workflow hasn’t changed much. For more advanced things, a lot of that information is scattered. It tends to happen with tools with less “Buzz” people busy just doing work and fewer people making videos for new users. I’m still feeling things out and discovering alternative workflows as well.

I feel so far it’s such a mixed bag, there’s some things in Sketch I actually really missed and parts of the experience I vastly prefer to figma (The default review workflow, it being a native app, the interface is more polished and way more communicative post UI3) but there’s things that need to improve. Luckily the team seem to be super responsive nowadays and are bringing new features to market really quickly. Very polished most of the time too.

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Hi @alicetransit

Welcome to this forum, and welcome back to Sketch! Congratulations on your new role! We appreciate you taking the time to share this detailed feedback.

A huge shoutout to @Ash for already jumping in with some amazing insights—thank you so much for that! You made my reply much easier to write :heart:

Taking advantage on Ash’s amazing reply, let me build on those insights and break down your feedback into two parts: features you’re missing in your workflow and quirks or issues you’re experiencing in Sketch right now.

About features you’re missing in your workflow I will summon @paulozoom since I believe he can provide more insights about upcoming features.

About the Quirks and Issues I will address them point by point.

1. The text cursor is slow, and text fields twitch when editing.

This sounds like a performance issue, and it’s certainly not the intended or expected behavior. It seems you and I may be having different experiences. I’d love to troubleshoot this with you further to pinpoint what’s happening.

2. Random 0.X px values added to layer positions (even with “Fix layers and points to pixel bounds” enabled).

This can happen in specific scenarios, so I’d need a bit more context about your workflow and document setup. There are nuances here that might explain why this occurs, and I’d be happy to investigate further.

3. The Mirror app downloads files to the phone instead of simply mirroring the screen.

The current Sketch View and Mirror app loads the document from the Workspace so you can always see the latest version on your device, yet mirror is possible. I will recommend you to follow the steps outlined in this article and let me know if this helps.

4. Symbols are sent to an unknown location after creation.

As Ash pointed out, when you create a Symbol, it’s sent to the Symbols Page by default. If you’d prefer it to stay on the same page where it was created, you can disable the option to send Symbols to the Symbols Page when you create your first Symbol in a new document. Note: This option only available upon creating the first Symbol in a document.

5. Files open to the wrong position (e.g., “middle of nowhere”).

We’ve made improvements to ensure files reopen where they were last viewed. If this isn’t happening, it might require further troubleshooting. Let’s work together to get this resolved.

6. Smart Layout feels unpredictable compared to Auto-Layout.

We understand this feedback and are working on solutions comparable to Auto-Layout in future updates. Smart Layout is designed to offer flexibility, but we recognize the learning curve for users familiar with Auto-Layout. If you can share a specific scenario where Smart Layout feels unpredictable, we’d love to provide guidance or explore improvements.

7. Zooming freezes when switching between files.

This seems like another potential performance issue. I’d recommend reaching out so we can look into this more deeply and ensure you have a smooth experience.

8. Lack of advanced online resources for Sketch.

As Ash cleverly pointed out, the availability of online resources depends on the creation of those resources. While we take pride in the work we do our blog, documentation, and social media content, we understand users want more in-depth tutorials. Beyond our existing resources, we offer scheduled sessions with our Design Advocates to help you optimize your workflow, and the Support team is also available to help in anyway we can.

With all this information, the main point I want to emphasize is that we’re here to take the time to help you.

For some of the issues you mentioned in the section “What makes my work painful in Sketch,” I highly recommend dropping us an email at productsupport@sketch.com. If you’re not keen on writing lengthy emails, no worries—a simple, brief email requesting a session with us will do the trick! :wink:

I hope this reply helps :crossed_fingers:

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Hi @alicetransit and thanks for taking the time to give us such clear but thorough feedback, I appreciate it. I want to complement @Cris’s reply by replying about a few things.

We’re also looking forward to it! We’ve been using it internally and it’s already been invaluable, but it’s still incomplete and buggy, so the release will only be next year. I’ll be posting a more detailed progress report and update on its forum topic soon.

Indeed, styles on artboards are already in the public beta. As for artboards within artboards, or something to that end… let’s just say that I think you’ll be happy.

For sure, we want to improve this, we just need to allocate some time to it.

This isn’t part of our public roadmap: the only symbol-related public roadmap item we have is just new ways to manage symbols. Regarding variants, it’s one of many things we’d like symbols to do which are really hard for us to achieve today, we’re not overly thrilled with them. We’ve had conversations about doing a fundamental rethink and rewrite of symbols next year, but it’s too early and too complex for us to commit to it happening.

No improvements planned for v102 beyond corner radius on images, I’m afraid. We’d like to do non-destructive cropping, but we’re not a huge company and at the moment everyone is busy with other priorities.

I’ll consider it a feature request! Could you tell me why the “Copy” is problematic for you?

As a side note: I’ve moved this topic to the ‘Share Your Knowledge’ section because the topic is too broad to vote on.

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Figma is much stricter about enforcing full pixel value it seems. Moving and scaling with the handles on the canvas, it’s almost impossible to get sub-pixel values for a shape or component. It’s quite easy to get those in Sketch when scaling on the canvas.

ie. If i create a 35x40 pixel rectangle and scale it on the canvas using a corner handle and use ‘shift’ ( or lock proportions ), it will create sub-pixel width. If the scaling is done from the bottom-left corner, it will also create a sub-pixel position.

It’s specific, but it also happens to me regularly.

Figma would round the values, but it also creates it’s own precision problems. If you scale an element enough it will slightly loose it’s original height/width ratio. :man_shrugging:

ps. Please delete previous post, had a misapp.

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Hi @Jean-Francois-b

I’m taking note of this scenario so we could investigate more about it. As soon I have additional context I will let you know.

Cheers :pray:

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I prefer the Sketch behavior too—preserving the aspect ratio above all else is what I’d expect when holding shift.

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