Hey folks 
We’re back again with a beta for what will probably be our last major update of the year. This one contains a bunch of things you’ve been asking for and lays some important groundwork for the big update you’re probably all waiting patiently for!
Update: We’re running a longer beta than usual, so you may not as many regular updates for a while.
Before we get to the details, let’s cover the usual basics…
How do I get it?
You can download our beta from sketch.com/beta— you’ll need an active subscription or license to use it. If you already have a beta build, you can open it and follow the prompts to update.
FYI: Opening documents in this version of Sketch may will make them incompatible with older versions (we try and limit how often this happens, but sometimes it’s unavoidable if we want to introduce new features). But this shouldn’t be a problem because you already make copies of your working documents to use with the beta, right? Right?
How do I share feedback?
If you run into any issues, the best way to share them with us is to click the 
Send Beta Feedback button in the toolbar. This should open an email template in your client of choice to fill out and send to us.
What’s in this beta?
An even better Command Bar
The feedback on the Command Bar has been really positive, and a lot of you have asked about using it to find an insert Symbols. This update offers just that!
We’ve added new ways to search, browse and insert Symbols (⌃ Y), Text Styles (⌃ T) and Artboard Templates (⌃ A) from the Command Bar. Each of these options has its own dedicated shortcut to make things even quicker.
You’ll see rich previews for each component type, along with full keyboard navigation. There are also shortcuts to navigate in and out of groups in your Libraries.
You can also swap Symbols, Artboards and Text Styles using ⌃ ⌘ R if you have one selected. Finally, you can search, insert and swap Layer Styles and Color Variables from the Command Bar, too.
Styling for Artboards
This one is both useful in its own right, and lays some important groundwork for us to bring a Flexbox-like layout feature to Sketch in the near future!
In short, you can now apply a range of style properties to your Artboards (fills, shadows, rounded corners, etc.), create Layer Styles, and set your own default style for them.
You can also choose whether or not Artboards clip their content from the Inspector. Artboards no longer include shadows by default, giving your Canvas a cleaner look.
Flexible Text Styles
A much-needed, and much-requested, improvement to Text Styles — alignment and color are now optional properties. This should make a huge difference to the number of Text Styles you need in your Libraries.
You’ll find options to exclude these properties both in the Components view, and in the More menu under the Text Style selector in the Inspector.
Markdown-like text override formatting
Sometimes, when you’re mocking up an interface, you’ll want to include a little styling in your text overrides — say, an underline to indicate a link, or maybe bold or italics. We’ve come up with a neat way to do this quickly some Markdown-like formatting syntax.
You can use this syntax to apply *bold*, _italic_, and [underline] formatting to any text overrides in the Inspector. Or you can select the text on the Canvas and hit ⌘ B, ⌘ I, or ⌘ U.
More updates and improvements
- You can now exclude specific Symbols from showing in the Command Bar, Insert and symbol swapping menus. Ideal for placeholders, Symbols you only ever want to nest, or screen-size Symbols you don’t want to swap to.
- There’s a new filter option in the Libraries panes of Settings and Document Settings to only show Libraries that are enabled.
- You can now choose whether or not to include corners in your Layer Styles — making it easier to keep your corners consistent across images, Artboards and regular layers.
- There’s a new toolbar item that shows a QR code to open your document in the iOS app, along with options to share its link.
- We’ve added an option to select or deselect all Components in the Component Updates sheet when you have a Library update.
- The Comments toolbar item now includes a detachable panel, showing all comments, authors and replies for your current document.
- You can now adjust the corner radius and styles on any image — no need to create a mask anymore!
- We’ve added a “Paste and Replace” option to replace your current selection with the pasted layer. You can find via Edit > Paste and the contextual menu, or use the shortcut ⌃ ⌘ ⇧ V.
Changes worth knowing about
- When you use a layer with borders as a mask, those borders now visually appear above any masked content. To have borders appear below the masked content, use two layers; one with the borders, and another above to act as the mask.
- After you draw an Artboard we no longer automatically enter renaming mode. Instead, you can double-click its name on the Canvas, or press ⌘ R.
- If you apply a Tint to a group, it will not affect that group’s shadows (if it has any). Tints will now only affect the contents of a group.
As always, there’s a full set of release notes and bug fixes over at sketch.com/beta.
Enjoy!
Also, I missed the option you added to hide a layer from the overrides menu. That is a huge quality of life improvement. No more empty symbol variants to achieve the same effect
