Survival guide for Sketch app users

I think by this time everyone knows that the sketch app wasn’t what it used to be. If you are like me who is just stuck with it or someone who still has faith, this one is for you.

When to update?

For some unknown reason, the sketch app is in some sort downward spiral, with every new release, with every new feature, the sketch is getting riddled with most basic obnoxious bugs, huge performance drops, unexpected behaviors, undercooked new features and some questionable UX decisions that I never saw in sketch app before or any mac apps for that matters.

1. You shouldn’t just update as soon as a new sketch released, not anymore. a good rule of thumb is to stay behind at least 2 versions.
2. Avoid hight note versions like 62, 63, 64, etc, as these most likely have some drastic changes and bugs that you don’t want to deal with on a Monday morning.
3. Read update logs from Sketch official website https://www.sketch.com/updates/ update the software only when it’s needed.
4. Avoid the first release version of any new feature.
5. Visit the sketch user forum https://spectrum.chat/sketch where users talk about it, now mostly complain about it.
6. If you are working with a team and also using the library and cloud features please make sure everyone in the team using the same sketch version.

Symbols, smart layouts, and the infamous component panel

Is it a symbol or component or both? As most of the sketch users, I was also excited when they first released the smart layout feature but it was short-lived.

1. Don’t go overboard with smart layout features, there are still some edge cases that developers are ironing out so be mindful.
2. Avoid complex symbol structure with smart layout however, something straight forward as a button won’t be an issue.
3. Avoid nesting smart layout symbols inside within another smart layout symbol, this will increase the complexity and might result in unexpected behavior.
4. The more smart layout symbols on a page the more the app slows down. and the more you’ll see the beach ball. Sometime the app will simply stop responding. which is especially true when you have a nested symbol with Smart layout.
5. Sometime when you drag and drop a symbol from the component panel on the artboard it simply goes inert, as in you can’t select, edit or move it won’t even show up in layer panel! spooky ha!? stuck to the good ‘ol insert menu.

Artboard and pages

Gone are the days when you can have hundreds of artboards and breeze through it like butter, more artboards = more drag.

1. Use pages as often as possible to divide your project user flow-wise and keep them in separate pages.
2. Use regular symbols as much as possible (i.e without smart layout) instead of duplicating the same header design throughout hundreds of pages turn them into a symbol and use it across the project. this will also help you when your client changes his mind about the font size in the last minute ;)

File management

Always keep a local backup at any cost.

Conclusion

It wouldn’t be fair to say sketch is still the best software of UX / UI Design, XD Figma are surpassed the sketch a long time ago, but they do have their problems. I sincerely hope, sketch bounce back to its glory. many freelancers and social media influencers like Rayn already jumped the ship but, that’s the story for another blog.

Stay home Stay Safe