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Has Sketch 70 Ruined the Toolbar?
Why I think the new Toolbar to match Big Sur is a big step backward
On November 17th, released Sketch 70 Beta. Alongside regular fixes and improvements that land with each major release of Sketch, the fundamental change was the Visual User Interface.
Sketch promoted this as a “UI redesign that fits right in with the new macOS Big Sur design language.” While I admire their excitement and their bold move to immediately align their UI with the latest macOS, it is my belief that Sketch has it’s own user groups and these users have a set of expectations and mental models which have been constructed from their interaction with Sketch itself and not the macOS on which Sketch is installed.
The updated Toolbar
The Sketch Toolbar is a UI control which over the years has seen relatively few major changes. The option to display the toolbar with or without icon labels is evidence of how successful the toolbar items can be discovered and remembered without a written label.
Since installing Sketch over 6 years ago I’ve made a few adjustments to my toolbar, mainly removing the items I rarely use in favour for those I use daily. After a few months of using Sketch, I also chose to turn off the display of labels to increase available…
