Sidebar is hard to navigate and understand

[SketchUser]

Hi all,

Is anybody else finding the layers sidebar really hard to navigate? I’m running the newest version of Sketch and have come across a series of issues I either don’t understand, or think can be improved with the sidebar:

1. The top layer frame/symbol no longer has a clear bar behind it as a marker that it’s the top level. This was a really useful indicator in the past where one artboard ended and another began.
2. Collapse all groups is handy for giving clarity to the top-level-frames, but when I click on one, sometimes it auto-opens, sometimes it doesn’t. I can click through them one by one and about 1 in 10 of them randomly open up.
3. Collapse all groups sometimes misses some top-level-frames?
4. I cannot figure it out, but some of my top-level-frames are, in the sidebar, not at the top level, but inset 1 looking like they are a child (but they should be at the top level)
5. If I collapse all groups and it works, as I click on top top-level-frames one by one, some open up, some don’t (I think ones with text layers, or a single object inside, open up).
6. The rollout arrows are now hidden until you hover over the icon of a layer - be it a symbol, group or frame. This might feel tidier, but I think being able to see that a group in particular can be rolled out is very useful rather than having that information less visible. I don’t think the icons for groups/frames/symbols are bold enough to be a clear signifier.
7. Only Show Selected and Related layers is a nice feature, but I think it should start immediately as soon as you click a top-level-frame, rather than having to go into the child layers of that frame to trigger the feature.

Hopefully others agree. The sidebar is a real frustration for me.

Thanks,

[Treword]

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Yeah, that makes sense. Sometimes I get that feeling that the structure has changed, but I can’t quite tell what’s missing .
4. Yes. Sometimes I need to reframe everything from scratch to make it work.
5. Yes.
6. 100% true. I’d love to always see a structure tree with arrows. And please don’t call it “old-school” or anything like that. It’s actually good for your brain, because you immediately know what you’re looking at without having to decode anything. When the structure is constantly hidden or changing, you have to decode it every time. Ideally, the structure should be easy to read and understand, rather than hiding elements or washing out its hierarchy.
7. Interesting. For me this stopped being a problem once I turned off “hide unrelated layers”. I used to be really frustrated when I had to deselect a frame just to see other frames/layers I wanted to work with. Repositioning frames in the list (showing/hiding them) was a pain.

[SketchUser]

I’m glad I’m not alone here. Hopefully a Sketch representative will be able to weigh in on this as there are some major fault issues amongst this list that make the sidebar very confusing/broken.