Prototyping improvements and a new way to export assets directly from Cloud — what’s new in Sketch?
This month, we’re introducing the option to export assets directly from Cloud and bringing a new Prototyping feature to the Mac app.
Powering up prototyping
We teased it in our 2020 video, but one of our focuses for this year is Prototyping. Since we introduced the feature back in Sketch 49, you’ve used it heavily and given us some great feedback. And we’ve been making some important changes.
In January, we introduced the option to hide hotspots in Cloud prototypes, making it easier to truly test your ideas and user experiences, without giving away where people should tap or click.
Now, with version 65 of the Mac app, we’re introducing the option to maintain the position of scrolling Artboards after you click on a prototype link. When you enable this option, you can scroll through an app or website prototype, click on a link to change Artboards, and scrolling elements will stay exactly as they are instead of returning to the top of the screen.
Maintain scroll position after click opens new Prototyping possibilities, such as overlay-style effects.
This feature has been long-requested and we’re excited about the new possibilities it brings. With it, overlay-style elements and state changes feel more natural and don’t interrupt your flow. You can find out more about how it works in our documentation. We’ve got more Prototyping updates planned for the future and we can’t wait to share them with you.
If you’re new to Prototyping in Sketch, it’s a great way to bring your ideas to life and test your assumptions with users in the browser or on devices. We’ve put together this short video to show you what you can do with it:
Mac updates, improvements and fixes
Version 65 — out today — also comes with plenty of smaller updates and improvements, including:
- Trim transparent pixels on exports — We’ve added a new option to trim transparent pixels when you export layers. When you enable it, any transparent pixels around the layers in your group won’t show up in your exported asset.
- More Cloud projects in the documents window — There’s now no limit to the number of Cloud projects you can add to the sidebar of your Documents window.
- Performance improvements — We’ve doing some Spring cleaning and tidied up our code, so creating and working with Symbols should feel a little faster.
You can update to version 65 right now, or read a full set of release notes at sketch.com/releases/mac.
Export assets from Cloud
Now, when you share Cloud documents with stakeholders, developers or anyone without access to the Mac app, they can download assets for your designs directly from Cloud in their web browser. It’s as simple as opening the document’s overview page and clicking Export Assets at the bottom of the sidebar.
With Export Assets, you can download a ZIP file of exportable layers and slices right from the browser.
To enable this option, you’ll need to mark layers in your document as exportable in the Mac app first. You can also disable Export Assets entirely in individual documents’ settings. Find out more about how it works in our documentation.
An update to Mirror
Finally, we’ve pushed out a small update to our iOS app — Mirror — to support the latest Prototyping improvements, improve compatibility with iOS 13 and fix a few bugs. It’s available from the App Store right now.
We hope you’ll enjoy this latest round of updates. We’re always listening to your feedback, so if you have any questions or run into any issues, please get in touch and let us know.
