@tim Great to see your team working on this.
I’d like to share a few suggestions that could make the workflow smoother and more efficient.
Clicking the [Inspect] icon in the corner is always the first step we take, and it’s simply a waste of time and effort. In the video, you can see how far the mouse has to travel to reach that icon and then go all the way back to the layers list. Please don’t move that icon to the left side — instead, make the left and right sidebars always visible
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The floating sidebar and inspector look nice, and the shadows are well done. But this is a developer tool — no one cares if UI elements float or pop out.
What actually matters is:
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Rendering performance (which is… slow).
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Fast, efficient UI → fewer clicks = better.
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Developer-oriented ergonomics → a compact layout that displays a lot of information in a small space.
You’re probably familiar with Xcode, Unreal Engine, Visual Studio Code, or the Web Inspector / Firebug. Sketch is the opposite of those tools, and that’s a problem. And please, don’t tell it’s a Sketch way of doing things… It’s wrong.
Consider reducing the font size and placing listed elements closer together. We need to see more items at once to scan the context quickly, without constantly scrolling, clicking, or unhiding what should be right here with zero clicks. Our eyes and brains can process far more information than the current interface allows without clicking and scrolling. Feed us like pros, not like TikTok users who can handle one thing at a time. It may sound harsh, but it’s true — this tool is used by people who scan super log files and find what they need in a second.
Please don’t make Sketch feel like a toy instead of a professional developer tool.
Also, limit UI movement as much as possible. Keep elements static and well organized. Don’t hide features just for the sake of a cleaner look. Place them where they are immediately discoverable and usable — with no extra clicks just to reveal an option.
The closer your WebApp is to the Mac app, the better. Don’t treat it as something separate. It should be as similar as possible. When a developer asks me, “Where is this thing in the WebApp?”, I get the same bad experience they do — because I don’t know either and have to figure it out. There is no need to learn a completely different UI scheme of the same tool.
For example:
In the Sketch App, the option for switching views (Pages/Components) is always visible and located on the left side of the app.
In the WebApp, to open the Components view you have to click the [i] icon — which feels like “I have no idea where to put this, so let’s hide it under the information icon.” This creates several conflicts:
There’s yet another place where you can find a link to Components: in the breadcrumbs. I’m not even sure whether it’s real breadcrumbs, a menu, or some hybrid, but what I do know is that it works poorly. I never know what will happen when I use it — sometimes it behaves like breadcrumbs, sometimes like a dropdown, sometimes it shows names, sometimes only icons. But what I know for sure is that you tend to hide absolutely essential tools and features.
That’s just one example illustrating the issue for your further analyze.
From my perspective, Sketch WebApp is built on the wrong conception about what we need and how we want use it.