Release Notes
🎉 Introducing Sketchpacks for macOS
Manage and auto-update Sketch plugins from your menu bar
Last year I wrote about my ideas for a Sketch plugin registry called Sketchpacks. The goal was to help solve the problems with discovering, managing, and delivering Sketch plugins. With Sketchpacks for macOS, and the Sketchpacks Relay Github integration. I feel like we’re much closer to realizing that goal!
The first iteration of Sketchpacks was a simple registry and API for searching Sketch plugins. However, it quickly became obvious that it only solved a small part of the problem. It needed a way to manage installed plugins, as well as a better system for keeping the registry up to date.
So I asked a good friend of mine, Bill Davis, for help building a more robust registry and API. He’s also working on the Github integration, which allows developers to keep their plugins up-to-date using web-hooks. This allowed me to focus on building a macOS app and creating a unified theme across both web and native mediums.
I’m happy to say that we now have a stable beta for the updated sketchpacks.com website, macOS app, Github integration, and RESTful API. This beta release comes with some nifty things that would make any walrus purr like a kitten.
If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late. — Reid Hoffman
You’ll notice the UI is a little rough around the edges, however we plan to continuously iterate on UI, relentlessly fix bugs, and curate new features as we approach v1.0.0. Let us know if you run into any bugs or have any suggestions!
Beta Features
⚡️ Automatic Updates
Keep your plugins up to date with the latest release served by the Sketchpacks Registry.
Auto Updates are powered by Sketchpacks Relay, enabling plugin authors to serve versioned plugin releases from their github in less than 15 seconds.
🔒 Version Locking
Don’t want all of your plugins to be updated automatically? No problem. Just lock an installed plugin at its current version. Sketchpacks won’t apply an update for you until you unlock it.
🔍 Search over 400 plugins
We’ve also made some fundamental, but significant improvements to the Plugins Search API which allows for a more accurate search result.
👉🏼 Are you a plugin author?
You can start serving your versioned plugin releases automatically in 15 seconds.
Start by installing the Sketchpacks Relay Github Integration and choose which plugins you will register with the Sketchpacks Registry and we’ll take care of the rest.
Sketchpacks Relay will serve your semantically versioned releases from your Github. No extra CLIs or commands — keeping your standard Github Releases workflow in tact.
Bill recently wrote about how you can get started with Sketchpacks Relay.
We love hearing feedback
✉️ Give feedback
Have some feedback you’d like to share? Good, we’re all ears. Leave us feedback in our github.
🐛 Report a bug
Be awesome today and report any bugs you notice. Report bugs at our Github Issues.
❓Ask a question
Have a general question you’d like answered? Feel free to email us.
