I recently submitted a bug report regarding working with variable fonts. However, the more I try to work with them, the more I realize that perhaps not many people do it. This is because there are so many bugs when working with variable fonts that it’s almost impossible to work with them.
Two recent issues are:
It is impossible to change the variable typeface after modifying the weight in it. This issue is not limited to a particular textbox but occurs in ANY new textbox in the document after modifying weight in varibale font. It has a 100% reproducibility rate.
Even without changing the weight, selecting the text in a textbox with a variable font visually changes its weight, although technically it doesn’t.
There are a few other minor bugs (two more that I have counted), but they are not as important compared to the ones I mentioned. I really like Sketch, but for my current project, I had to switch back to Figma because it’s nearly impossible to work with variable fonts right now. I hope you can fix this in the near future. I really want to uninstall Figma!
First, thanks a lot for the detailed explanation and details you added to your post/report.
We already replied to the email you sent us, but I think it’s a good idea to answer you here as well, in case someone is in the same situation.
The functionality of the macOS governing this feature is directly involved in the current behavior of Sketch. As such, there’s little we can do (even though we are constantly trying to test different methods in every macOS release).
Also, for anyone interested out there, don’t hesitate to reach out via productsupport@sketch.com, and we will keep the communication open there so we can directly notify you once this is solved.
My sincerest apologies in the meantime, Constantine!
It’s not that we don’t support them; the reality is that the macOS feature that controls this, and Apple’s API that allows Apps to manage them, have some bugs, avoiding the correct functioning, in this case, with Sketch
We are in touch with Apple and have informed them about Variable Fonts’ importance and how they fail. Unfortunately, as you can see, we’re dependent on OS fixes here, so we hope this gets solved with a macOS update soon.
May I ask you to give me any specifics: what particular API or module is broken? Maybe I can help somehow. Maybe I can also submit the bug to facilitate the ticket prioritization? I really don’t want to use Figma, but I don’t have any choice now - it’s a blocker.
