A new Smart Layout control, a better way to save and more — what’s new in Sketch?

After an exciting end to 2019, we’re kicking off the year with an update to the Mac app. It’s packed full of bug fixes, improvements and a handy new upgrade to Smart Layout. Here’s what’s new in Sketch 62:

New Smart Layout controls

With this release, we’re introducing a new Smart Layout control to make creating and using flexible components in your designs more reliable.

Now, when you give a Symbol Smart Layout properties, you’ll see a field for minimum height (for vertical layouts) or minimum width (for horizontal layouts) under the Layout panel in the Inspector.

With this, you can set minimum dimensions for a Symbol with Smart Layout to shrink to, based on its overrides.

In other words, it’s a handy way to make sure buttons don’t become too tiny to tap as you cut down label copy, or that fields in your forms never shrink too small.

And in case you’re wondering, the option to set maximum dimensions is coming soon!

A better way to save

When we launched Cloud Documents last year, we made it easier than ever to create, upload, edit and collaborate on the documents you share with your Team in Sketch Cloud.

Up until now, when you started work with a fresh Sketch document you’d need to choose whether it was a Cloud document (one shared immediately in Sketch Cloud with your team) or a local document (one stored locally on your Mac). But thinking about where you’ll save your document shouldn’t get in the way of great work, so with Sketch 62 we’ve changed that.

We’ve completely rewritten our save dialog to give you flexibility and control about where your documents live when you hit save. That way you can experiment and try out new ideas without worrying that your document is saving to Cloud and already being shared with your team.

When you hit save, you’ll get a choice to save your documents locally (on your Mac) or to Cloud. And if you’re saving to Cloud, you’ll be able to choose which Team (if you’re part of one) and Project (if you’ve created one) to save to.

This change might feel small, but we think over time it’ll help speed up your workflow and reduce the friction of starting a new project or trying out a new idea.

A whole host of improvements and bug fixes

With the first release of the year, we wanted to take some time to make some small but important improvements across the app, along with a round of bug fixes that address some of the most common issues you’ve been running into. Here are some of the highlights:

• We’ve added Libraries tabs to the sidebar of the Documents window, giving you a quick way to find Libraries you share with your Team(s) on Cloud.
• The Components Panel and popover should feel faster and smoother when you’re working with Libraries of all shapes and sizes (and we’ve got more improvements on the way in future updates).
• We’ve improved the accuracy and appearance of documents with missing fonts, especially for text layers with specific alignment or Smart Layout settings and where multiple instances of the same text layer appear in a single document.

Sketch 62 is available to download or update to right now. As ever, we’d love to know what you think of the release and we’re always listening to your feedback. We’ve got plenty of exciting updates in the pipeline, including a very exciting one later in the month. Stay tuned!