Sketch Keyboard Shortcuts
Enhancing your flow, one keystroke at a time
As a Mac OS user, you probably already know how to copy and paste. I’ll show you some more advanced shortcuts that I use a lot that maybe you’re not aware of. All of them are huge time savers.
To make myself adapt to the shortcut, I tend to learn it immediately — as soon as I navigate through a menu or try to find the right icon. It’s a bit painful, but it’s worth it when you think about how many times you’ll perform these actions everyday.
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Basics and/or hidden
Z Zoom tool (hold down and click or drag an area)
Escape Exit every mode, tool, selection
Space Hand Tool
Enter Edit currently selected layer
Tab Cycle through layers in the current group (useful when renaming)
Shift Tab Reverse cycle
⌥ drag duplicate a layer
⌥ hover display distance between other layers
⌥ resize resize from the center
shift resize resize and preserve aspect ratio
⌥ ⌘ click toogle menu with layers under the mouse
hold ⌘ and point select layers inside non-click-through groups
⌘ R rename layers or artboards
⌘ Shift L lock or unlock layers
⌘ Shift H hide or show layers
↑ ↓ ← → move
⌘ ↑ ↓ ← → resize
↑ ↓ change field values
holding shift while moving, resizing, changing field values will perform the action by 10px increments instead of 1px
File
shift ⌘ E Export mode
Edit
⌥ ⌘ C Copy style
⌥ ⌘ V Paste style
control C Color picker
shift ⌘ R Rotate layer
hold ⌘ while using resize handles Rotate layer
Insert
V Vector point
R Rectangle
O Oval
U Rounded Rectangle
T Text
Arrange
⌘ F Find layer
View
⌘ + Zoom in
⌘ - Zoom out
⌘ 1 Center canvas
⌘ 2 Zoom selection
control R Toggle Rulers
control G Toggle Grid
control P Toggle Pixel to Vector
control L Toggle alignment guides
Don’t forget!
- You can do mathematical operations in numeric fields
- Double-click on rulers to add manual guides
- Edit > Set Style as Default can be very handy
- Edit > Scale unlike manual resizing, adjusts everything (font sizes, line weights, blendings, etc.)
- You can use Make Grid on a single shape or folder to generate copies
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Update 2013/11/05
Copy a shape style with multiple fills to a text layer to remove the one fill limitation
Hold the ‘A’ key to prevent Sketch from selecting another layer