Sketch Updates and broken Plugins

Dear Sketch Team.
I’m getting frustrated with Sketch updates, most of the time it comes with bugs, and on top, you break Plugins. Is there a way you could work with plugin developers more closely to make sure that they stay stable for an extended period of time?

Not a Sketch team member, but I believe the answer is no, not really, unfortunately.

Do you have any particular plugins in mind that are no longer working after recent Sketch updates? If they are open-source some other plugin developers might be able to make them work again.

Here is a list of some plugins that are no longer working.

Symbol Instance Locator

Import SVG as Artboards

PDF Export — Sketch Plugin (broken)

Shared Text Styles

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I’ve created a PR with a fix for the latest Sketch version: Make the plugin compatible with the latest Sketch by rodionovd · Pull Request #23 · mathieudutour/import-svg-as-artboard · GitHub. There’s also a direct link to a .sketchplugin for you to download and test.


I’ll spend some time next week on the rest of the plugins to see if they can also be fixed to support the current Sketch version.

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Hey Paulius,

Apologies for the inconvenience; we’ll keep a close eye on the bugs to ensure future releases are more stable. The plugin part will probably be a bit more difficult, as Dmitry already referred to in the reply above.

Here’s a PR with a fix: Make the plugin compatible with recent Sketch updates by rodionovd · Pull Request #33 · DWilliames/PDF-export-sketch-plugin · GitHub.

Feel free to download the plugin using this link https://github.com/rodionovd/PDF-export-sketch-plugin/archive/refs/heads/sketch-98-compatibility.zip and see if it works for you now.

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Wow, this is amazing! Thank you @rodionovd! :pray:

I tested the plugin and the feature that was not working for me was exporting as PNG. I downloaded the latest version you shared and it’s working now!! Tested on the latest Beta (99) and final version 98.3

Thanks again! :raised_hands:

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You are amazing!
I’m so happy to have this plugin back.
Thank you so much!!!

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You’re very welcome!

I’ve also made an attempt to resurrect Symbol Instance Locator – please see my WIP PR for the download link: [WIP] Sketch 98 compatibility by rodionovd · Pull Request #38 · sonburn/symbol-instance-locator · GitHub. I’ve tested on various symbol instances and overrides but please let me know if something is still missing.

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Hi folks, just a quick update. I moved this topic to the Share an issue category.

Cheers!

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Hey folks, @Paulius @dfmedrano

Looks like my version of the PDF Export plugin was incompatible with the upcoming Sketch 100 – and I’ve just pushed a fix for it. So make sure to grab a new version of the plugin before installing a Sketch update.

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The new Sketch version usually comes with a new list of unsupported plugins. I sometimes don’t understand Sketch’s product development strategy of adding a few new nice-to-have features and breaking a lot of existing plugins that can provide much more value.
@dfmedrano I would love to see Sketch Runner back, please.

Credit where credit is due, this time it wasn’t really anything new in Sketch that caused the plugin to malfunction but a bug in the plugin code itself which means the plugin works in e.g. Sketch 98.3 or 99.1 but not in 98, 99, or 100.

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Hi @rodionovd , thanks so much for this! It’s much appreciated!

I’ve tested it with the latest beta and it’s working, hooraaaaaay! :partying_face: :bowing_man:

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Hey Paulius, I must ask something that may be obvious: have you tried Command Bar?

If you have, what’s in Runner that makes it you prefer it over Command Bar? We’re always up for improvement, always, but when we start using a new tool, it’s also normal that it feels a bit off at first, specially if it’s an equivalent for a previous one.

However, if there’s something missing or not quite right, we’d love to hear about it :pray:

Hi Jorge,
Yes, I tried it briefly, but it’s not something I’ll be using. Have many customers been asking for this feature? At least I haven’t seen it requested anywhere on your forum.

The most helpful feature in Runner for me was the RunBar. I used it all the time because it was a way to save time when accessing plugin shortcuts or navigating the document using the nav history.

When nice-to-have updates are introduced, I would recommend that you at least test the top plugins and work with the plugin developers to resolve any issues. It’s just sad to see you break existing plugins, some of them are part of my workflow and I rely on them to do my job effectively. Product quality, performance and compatibility is my biggest issue with Sketch. This needs to change if you care about your customers.

@rodionovd
The Import SVG as Artboards plugin is broken again in the latest Sketch and the new Sketch 100 beta.
Is there a way to make it work?

Do you happen to have a sample SVG that couldn’t be imported via the plugin? I’ve tested it on a few that I have on the latest beta and it seems to be working as expected.

You can download SVG sample files from the Google Material Symbols page.

Tried a couple icons from there and they were imported correctly as far as I can tell. What kind of error/importing issues you’re getting?