If I’m understand you correctly… this is because Command ignores groups for selection, but it doesn’t frames, and this is so you can ⌘-click to select a nested frame and move it, change it styles, etc. If you were used to doing Command-drag before, were you then locking your background rectangles so you wouldn’t select them? Because otherwise that would catch them.
In any case, I suggest you do X + drag. This little-known shortcut (we’re working on making it more discoverable!) brings up the marquee selection tool, and you can you use on top of existing layer without selecting the layer you start on — but make sure you’re on the latest beta. Give it a try! You can hit X then drag like other tools, but you can also hold X and drag similar to a modifier, if you’re used to that.
You can still do this with children of “tidy” groups, that didn’t go away. But not on children of proper stacks. As to whether or not we’ll make that accessible, I’ll leave that for my colleague @chris. But a question from me: with a child selected, do you find yourself wanting to adjust the spacing more often on the canvas, or in the inspector?
In the current beta is it possible to still apply smart layouts? I’m aware of some of the bugs outstanding with stacks in symbols etc but I’m doing some evaluation and I wouldn’t mind bypassing those bugs for a little while by using smart layouts
Sure is, the action remains available in the menu bar and command bar. If you’d like to set up a custom shortcut for it, you can do so via System Settings.
I’ll need a little time to adjust, so I’ll get back to you soon! In the meantime, I really miss having the old Sketch Ungroup as a separate action in the top toolbar. It was so handy!
Will there be a way to set up a keyboard shortcut to easily toggle the grid and layout for the main “artboard” you’re working on, and a separate one for stacks? That would be super helpful!
I noticed a weird new change in the latest update, Sketch icon that opens Command bar. Is this intentional? It doesn’t work well in dark mode, should probably look more like other icons? There is still an old icon for command bar in the dropdown.
Yes, it is intentional — but we’re still working on it. We’re attempting to release beta updates daily, so you’ll see a few more things than usual as work in progress. The icon’s color here matches the beta icon (and thus will have a different color the public release), but thanks for the feedback about dark mode!
After spending some more time in the beta - setting the colour of nested frames to yellow has continued to just straight up be an inconvenience. It’s really common for me to be in a frame and draw another one straight inside - I’ve never found myself confused by empty frames, I can see them in the layers list and the overwhelming majority of the time I just use them straight away. Now I have that extra little bit of friction and frustration having to reach across and turn off a yellow background that I do not need. If I later add a background colour to the frame, I have to also go through the step of modifying or deleting that yellow fill.
If there really is some use case where people want this, please could you make a preference to turn this behaviour off. I get not wanting to stuff the settings menu with options, but if you’re going to have strong opinions about things like this in an application, you kind of have to lean on it a bit more often.
Thanks for the feedback. I’d like to learn more about your needs here. What are some cases where you want to leave your frames without a background color? Are those the majority? And in those cases, why are frames preferrable to groups?
Couple of notes, by the way. If you wrap a selection in a frame with ⌘F, the new frame won‘t have a background color. To quickly toggle on/off fills, you can press ⇧F.
If I want to immediately lean on the flexible sizing of a frame over a group, Say I want to lay out a section on a website - it makes a little more sense to start off with a frame than a group and later converting it back to a frame. I might have an idea of the amount of space I want to use before committing and later adding stacks or sub groups. Previously you might find yourself creating a series of nested groups you later need to unpick.
Yeah, I had noticed that it doesn’t happen with cmd+F, it just makes the inconsistency more jarring personally.
I’m with Ash on the random colors for the nested frame. I understand why it was done but in real work this is really not an issue that needs to be resolved in such a prominent way. You are mostly aware of the frames you create and if there are some created by accident you debug the issue and remove them. Many frames, especially nested ones, will not need a background, so removing it will be more work than adding it.
I will most likely use frames for any group so it will likely be used without a background for things like icons and other elements that are nested within a parent component.
Why is that? What makes you get away from groups entirely? If you don’t need the container to have a given size and it’s mostly about bringing some layers together, groups remain a great choice for that, so you don’t need to re-fit the frame if the contents change position. I find myself still using them often to group a few text layers together, in cases where reaching for a stack feels unnecessary.
For sure, in this case I’d even suggest graphics instead (which, yes, get a fill when drawn).
