I want to check the background blur value to copy it over to another element. I need to not only select the element like before, but now I need to click one more button to expose the details. I copy the value, the go to the other element, click it, again need to click the details of the effect and paste it.
Note: I am also a designer, and I understand keeping things clean and elevate information only when needed, but sometimes there is an interface for professionals. This panel is supposed to give me everything, I loved it over Figma, and I am sad if this kind of experience is going to get taken away. I am currently designing a product for financial professionals and we constatly evaluate how can we keep things nice and clean while giving as much information as we can. Very often the information exposure wins because that’s how it becomes easy to use.
Export
I don’t see whether the @2x is a prefix or a suffix, I need to click the dropdown.
So to see it, I now have to go to Inspect panel as before, but now I need to click the export details to get the popover and click the combo box to see the setting. Before, I could see it by just glancing over the inspect panel
Just from looking at it, having an option to show the labels beneath the icons would probably not work with this new design framework. It’d be out of place, ruining aesthetics and visual balance.
Now with that said - I was wondering about the same thing. Is it justifiable to lose some of functionality in favor of a refreshed look. That’s a design and business question I guess. In case of Sketch’ redesign, I’d say it’s fine. Having tooltips showing below the buttons helps a lot to bridge this loss of function.
Agree, the stepper is a godsent and the dragging is not as precise. I miss it too in the new design, and as you said it’s a great differentiator from Figma
Exactly. The absence of it is immediately noticeable. I see this often times with products removing expected and quality of life features for little to no advantage - or more to the detriment of the product. There is something satisfying about clicking those small arrows and watching the numbers and canvas change. You feel in control of the software. It’s as if the software meets you half way and says: “i got you fam”.
Great update, congrats to the team . one thing i notice is everything seems little small. touch controls, color picker sliders, on off Switches even the text at some ares like sidebar are looks smaller
Despite what few people mentioned, I really liked the smaller icons and more compact interface in general. I think it can now fit more functionality. What I don’t like that sometimes in select element we have icons beside values in dropdown, but after dropdown is closed, they are gone.
@here Thanks for all your feedback! As you can probably tell, this thread is already hard to follow. The team will be monitoring/discussing internally. A reminder of what I mentioned in the op:
To save the replies below becoming hard to follow, please report any bugs you find in Share an issue — thanks!
It’s going to be tricky for us to reply to everyone individually in this thread. Even if you’re not sure if what you’re seeing is a bug, please report in share an issue. Worst case scenario, we tell you it’s expected but it’s another data point for us if it turns out to be a confusing side effect of there redesign.
In this case, you should be seeing the icon change color to indicate its state, and also the tooltip should change. Let me know if that’s not happening for you.
Lots here to discuss — some may well be bugs, others may be intentional (but could be revisited) — thank you! I have passed it all onto the team to dig into. A couple of things that may be helpful:
New UI":
click the color
change the tab to color variables
Holding ⌥ and clicking on any color well will open the color panel with color variables selected.
I want to check the background blur value to copy it over to another element. I need to not only select the element like before, but now I need to click one more button to expose the details. I copy the value, the go to the other element, click it, again need to click the details of the effect and paste it.
In this case, you can always ⌃-Click / secondary click to copy/paste effects between layers, like so:
I’ve started playing around with the new beta this morning and overall, it’s great! However, I do hope the Sketch team will reconsider not using inset/floating sidebars. I’ve really grown to love that design choice over the last few months on iPadOS/MacOS 26, it makes the canvas feel much more expansive and gives some additional contextual information by allowing me to glimpse content just to the left/right of the main view area. It’s a small thing, but I do believe it adds some real utility in addition to fitting in better on Tahoe.
Thanks for sharing! It’s honestly unlikely that we’ll reconsider the floating sidebars. I shared the prototype we made during early development in my original post, but in testing, we just found it to be too distracting. Perhaps this is not an issue for apps where the content of the sidebars isn’t so dense, or you interact with it less, but it’s the opposite in Sketch — information dense, and you interact with it constantly.
I would appreciate the reverse to work as well: ⌥ to show the picker when a variable is selected. It’s not rare that I need a one off shade derived from a variable (for an illustration), or that I’m extending the UI palette from existing variables.
This does make sense. I think I’m struggling with this decision because a big component of Sketch’s value prop for me is an interface that is very native to MacOS and this is such a prominent departure from Tahoe’s design system. Perhaps there will be a way to incorporate it in the future with fewer tradeoffs, but, again, overall I am still excited about the rest of the beta!
Not a fan of the new look, clean but generic. I understand that Sketch has always tried to stick to the Apple native UI design
I don’t have Tahoe installed yet, so maybe it’s related, but why is Sketch’s accent color now blue instead of orange?
In general I can’t say I like the new look of the inspector, I find the fonts harder to read, elements are less contrasty where needed, but also more distracting (selections/active indicator) when it’s not so necessary. I’ll get use to it I guess. Let’s focus on issues:
Where are the unit increment steppers?
I can’t hide sidebars independently anymore. It was useful on smaller screen.
When creating a rectangle, a border is always applied but inactive (like before). But changing the color of the border doesn’t automatically activate it anymore.
Color
Selecting a Color Variable for gradients takes too many clicks
I really miss seeing the color picker and the variables at the same time
Adding transparency to Color Variable inside gradients is worse than before.
(Creating a gradient from 0-100 opacity on a color variable fill should be an easy quick task)
Text Styles
Text Styles don’t have previews anymore.
Popup for Text Styles could be bigger. Would be nice if we could change the height of the popups.
Layer/Symbol
“Back to instance” button for Symbol source edit is very subtle. I feel like new users won’t even see it.
Still miss better separation/visual hierarchy of Artboards vs content in the layer panel. Focus layer list is really nice though.
creating a symbol, and all the elements are black against a black background, the fill used to have the option to have a fill, but not be present in the actual design. That seems to have been removed? Example attached
After the color panel expanded, even if I tap elsewhere in the inspector, it no longer closes.
It is very cumbersome to specifically press the close button on that small window.
It’s great that it became a window, but the desired behavior would be to keep it floating if the user intentionally moved the window, and to close automatically otherwise.
. one thing i notice is everything seems little small. touch controls, color picker sliders, on off Switches even the text at some ares like sidebar are looks smaller
