I’m not sure if this is intended behaviour, I’m doing something wrong, or it’s a bug.
I’m seeing a lot of duplicate symbols on my Symbols page, and I couldn’t figure out why they were appearing or how they were being created.
Upon some trial and error I think it happens when I duplicate either an artboard that has used the Symbol, or copy paste the Symbol onto a new artboard. I’m still not sure if that’s the reason. It definitely doesn’t happen when I add a symbol through + option and search for it, and manually place it onto a new artboard.
If that is the reason, I duplicate artboards with Symbols, and copy/paste Symbols quite often and wouldn’t like that to keep creating duplicate symbols.
Does anyone have any ideas around this or can point out what I’m doing wrong?
There is a difference in how Sketch works with symbols vs let’s say Figma. In Figma you create a component and then if you duplicate it it creates an instance in the same canvas. In Sketch there is intentionally more separation between Symbols and their instances. If you duplicate symbol, it creates a new symbol. You always have to insert symbol instance instead of duplicating symbol.
Sketch also puts Symbols in a separate page for easier mgmt, while Figma keeps everything in the same page unless you move it.
I understand but unfortunately I won’t be able to share the document for confidentiality reasons. Anything else I could provide for you to help with this? Apologies again.
@wwwedran That does make sense and it’s consistent with my experience of using Sketch for many years. the problem I’m having is that it’s a bit unpredictable when it duplicates a symbol. I just tried option+shift+drag out an artboard with some symbols, and it didn’t duplicate the symbols. But I’ve definitely seen duplicate symbols that I delete and then find instances across my document unlinked to the original.
Have you been copy pasting artboards from other documents? Duplicate symbols sometimes show up when you bring over designs from another document that isn’t synced to the latest version of your libraries. It’s very painful and I don’t know if there is a way to prevent it.
@hone_w I understand you cannot share the document with us for privacy reasons, but without reviewing the document, much of our support is based on guessing. Could you email us a high-resolution screen recording showing the layer list and inspector? Maybe this way, we can determine the best solution.
For privacy reasons, I recommend you share this video by emailing it to productsupport@sketch.com. Let me know if this is possible.
Thanks a lot for your response. Unfortunately I won’t be able to share the document, or provide a screen recording and I understand you cannot provide support without seeing the problem.
I actually tried to create another document and duplicate the steps to replicate the issue, but it doesn’t seem to be happening in the other document, otherwise I would’ve shared the new document.
I’ll keep an eye on when it happens again, and then I’ll try and share the affected layers in a new document if that helps.
Just as a clarification of functionality, are you able to confirm if when duplicating artboards, or copy-pasting content including nested symbols from one artboard, to other artboards would cause the symbols or nested symbols to duplicate?
If you confirm that that isn’t supposed to happen, then I’ll definitely keep an eye on it and report back.
Regarding duplicated symbols, we did a few additional tests on our end and did not find any recent bugs.
As a general rule for future reference: copying and pasting a symbol instance does not create duplicate symbols, while copying and pasting a symbol source will.
In the current version 101, it’s easy to distinguish between symbol sources and symbol instances. Symbol sources are assigned to specific artboards, and it isn’t possible to insert that artboard into another. Therefore, the only way to duplicate symbols is by locating the symbol source and then copying and pasting it (or cross-document copy and pasting).
With the upcoming version of Sketch (which is already available in Beta), we are introducing Frames that will allow nesting frames within other frames.
My recommendation is to keep this in mind: You will be able to place a symbol source inside of a frame, and when you duplicate that frame, you will also be duplicating the symbol source. Here’s a quick demo:
I’ve been doing this (across documents admittedly) and have noticed that it won’t create new symbols if the name of the artboard and content are exactly the same.
Play it safe and have the artboard size, name, layer names, folder structure/hierarchy, background settings and content identical.
Also, took me ages to find, but this also applies to properties like colors. If you have two symbols with an identical white circles, but one has a color swatch name FFFFFF and the other has a swatch named WHITE, the symbols will not be considered identical and it will make a duplicate.
Your comment made me wonder if duplicating the artboard which causes a “Copy” to be created and that’s reflected in the name change of the symbol/layer, could make it different enough to be duplicated. If that’s the case maybe I’ll try disabling the “Rename duplicated layers” option from preferences.
