Copy SVG Code non-funcitonal for single layers

[tiptronic (Andy Fuchs)]

When selecting a layer, the Copy SVG Code menu-item is gone from the context-menu.
The Copy SVG Code menu-item is still in the Mac’s menu bar, but that’s cumbersome to work with and requires loads of mouse-moves.

Anyone else seeing this?

• Sketch version: Version 2025.1 (203044)
• macOS version: 15.5 (24F74)

Steps to reproduce:
Select a shape - right click it

Expected results:
Copy SVG Code is shown

Actual results:
Copy SVG Code is not shown

This is IMPORTANT for me at it belongs to my usual workflow…

How can I now go back to a previous version of Sketch??

[Cris (Cristiana)]

Hi @tiptronic

Thank you for this report. We are aware of this and we can say this change was intentional.

To overcome it, I recommend to either user Command Bar or Create a Custom Keyboard Shortcut:

How to use command bar

1. Select your layer
2. Press S
3. Type Copy SVG Code
4. Press ⏎

How to create a custom keyboard shortcut

1. Open System Settings (or System Preferences in older macOS versions).
2. Navigate to Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts.
3. Select App Shortcuts (this may be under Shortcuts in some versions).
4. Click the + button to add a new shortcut.
5. In the pop-up window:
   • Choose Sketch from the application list.
   • Enter the exact menu command name you want to assign a shortcut to (e.g., “Copy SVG Code”).
   • Click the Shortcut field and press the keys you want to use.
6. Click Done to save your changes. Your new shortcut should now be active in Sketch.

Here is a little video demo of these steps.

[Cris (Cristiana)]

If you really want to roll back the version, you can follow the steps outlined in this article: How to roll back to a previous Mac app version?

But beware: After you roll back, you will need to roll back the document version for every document you opened with Athens .

Here are the steps to roll back the version of your documents:

1. Go to Sketch.com and download a copy of the document (do not open)
2. Be sure that the correct version of Sketch is open.
3. Open the downloaded document
4. Click on your avatar in the top right corner, and you will see an option to “Update document” - Be sure you are the only one editing the document; if someone else is editing the document, this option will not be available.
5. Select update, and this will allow you to replace the latest version of the document

[tiptronic (Andy Fuchs)]

Hi Cris,

thanks - I rolled back and tried to answer your question in Mail from my mail-account, but I got this:

We’re sorry, but your email message to [“notifications@sketch.discoursemail.com”] (titled Re: [Sketch Community Forum] [Share an issue] Copy SVG Code non-funcitonal for single layers) didn’t work.

Here are some things to check:

• Do you use more than one email address? Did you reply from a different email address than the one you originally used? Email replies require that you use the same email address when replying.
• Did your email software properly use the Reply-To: email address when replying? Unfortunately, some email software incorrectly sends replies to the From: address, which won’t work.
• Was the Message-ID header in the email modified? The Message-ID must be consistent and unchanged.

Need more help? Reach out to us via the Contact Us details at About - Sketch Community Forum

[tiptronic (Andy Fuchs)]

Hi Cristiana,

thanks for your reply.

But I really have to say this is a MAJOR step backward, as it exposes much more mouse-movement to my workflow.

Using the Command-bar makes things even worse, especially if you want to copy multiple items (either one-by-one or all-by-one).

Also - Sketch seems to crash on various occasions when trying to open an very basic Sketch (see attachment).

If you remove the line:

it works.

Here’s the SVG as text:

<svg width="200" height="100" viewBox="0 0 200 100" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
  <defs>
    <rect id="background_3" x="0" y="0" width="200" height="100" rx="16"/>
  </defs>
    <use id="clipping" fill="FFF" fill-rule="nonzero" xlink:href="#background_3"/>
    <g id="content" mask="url(#clipping)" font-weight="bold" fill="#FFF" text-anchor="middle">
        <rect id="bg_3" fill="orange" fill-rule="nonzero" x="0" y="0" width="200" height="100" rx="16"/>
    </g>
 </svg>

I can also reproduce a crash, if I add a with a negative width

I am also having a ton of problems when resizing Artboards in this version, because it automatically resizes everything in the artboard.

So it seems I now have to go into each and every Artboard click the new ‘Layout’ icon and then delete it (and activate ‘Clip content’) just to be able to resize the Artboard like before → WITHOUT resizing all content.

Right now I rolled back to 101.9.

Hopefully your devs will consider an update which doesn’t mess with existing stuff.

Thanks

andy

[wazynski]

Can I also second that this is a terrible decision and is now another factor slowing down the use of Sketch as a developer, and please consider adding this back.

[paulozoom (Paulo Pereira)]

We’re going to bring this back to the menus in a future update.

[wazynski]

Excellent news. Thank you.

[tiptronic (Andy Fuchs)]

For me it means I can’t update to the new version at all, because:

• the crash above
• the breaking resize-behaviour

and, to make things worse, it’s always a GREAT RISK to try out the new version, because as soon as I want to try if things work and I open one file in question, Sketch modifies the file and I can’t go back easily.

Honestly, this is the worst experience I can imagine - and I am/was a huge fan of Sketch.

[paulozoom (Paulo Pereira)]

@tiptronic

the crash above

Hi @tiptronic, could you please reach out to productsupport@sketch.com with information about the crash? I could understand your original message about it, it seems like it’s missing some text, and we can’t quite see the attachment either.

@tiptronic

• the breaking resize-behaviour

I’m sorry about this. We clearly made a wrong call earlier on, so we’ve just released a 2025.1.3 update which changes how Artboards are converted to Frames when you open existing documents: unless they had “Adjust content on resize” enabled, we’ll now set a fixed height and width for its contents, and pin them to the top-left corner. This preserves the previous behavior where resizing the Frame won’t proportionally affect the size or position of its contents.

Note that this will only apply to documents you haven’t already opened with the Athens update, we’ve made a plugin to set these new defaults (fixed sizing, top-left pins) for children of top-level frames on existing documents. You can download it here: https://github.com/sketch-hq/default-sizing-pinning-plugin — then install and run from the Plugins menu.

[tiptronic (Andy Fuchs)]

Hi @paulozoom

I did (on May 29th (11:50) - and sent a video with the crash along with a very simple SVG which causes Sketch to crash and is 100% reproducible for me). Crash-report was also submitted…

Atm. I’m pretty reluctant trying out the new version, because when I tried the last time, it took me quite some time to roll back.

I don’t mean downloading a previous Sketch-version, but I can’t roll back a version of the document to its previous state after opening it with the new version…(which I expected to be the case anyway - much like in GIT).

The suggested way (downloading the file from the web-client and then re-importing into the old version) is just as lame as it can get - and takes too much time for just testing if things work.

I wished there was a Sketch - version which lets me check the new features and just go back to my document using an older version of my document - if things don’t work as expected.

(And to make things even worse: I also have to keep Sketch 93 on my machine, because when I’m going to work on older projects, newer versions of Sketch don’t open some of the files…)