5 Custom Sketch 3 Shortcuts that I use to improve my productivity and how to create your own
Tips on how to create and use the shortcuts effectively
You’ll never stop hearing about sketch from me. This has hardly happened in past where I used some tool which was very light weight and I liked it. But the things you can achieve with this one will blow you away. If you still haven’t tried it I’ll suggest you do it as soon as you can! For the ones who have just started and still getting hang of it, I’ll tell you how to create your own shortcuts and list of some of my own.
First I’ll tell you how to create custom shortcuts in Sketch 3. If you want to skip that part you can sroll at the end of this article to find my custom shortcuts I use frequently.
First of all start Sketch 3. Now lets say you want to have a shortcut for ‘Insert > Image…’ (you can see there is no shortcut assigned to it right now)
Go to your Mac’s ‘System Preferences’ and then go to ‘Keyboard’
In ‘Keyboard’ go to the ‘Shortcuts’ tab and then click on ‘App Shortcuts’ in the left panel as shown below:
As you can see above I’ve already added few shortcuts to ‘Sketch’. Now lets add another one for ‘Insert > Image…’. Now click on the ‘+’ icon below the second panel, a new window will come like this:
Now click on ‘All Applications’ and bring down the drop-down list and select ‘Sketch’ as shown here:
Now since we want a shortcut for ‘Image…’ type in the name exactly as it appears in the application and assign a shortcut key which you think is convenient for you and is not assigned to something else and then click ‘Add’. Take a look:
The new added shortcut will appear in the panel on the right side, and also in your application:
My Custom Shortcuts for Sketch 3
While on Sketch (or any other app for that matter), I keep my left hand on the keyboard while the right is on the mouse. So for me I have good access to buttons till T-G-B without leaving the mouse. So I have changed few defaults shortcuts in Sketch 3 to suit myself.
Zoom In and Out (New ‘cmd + 4' ‘cmd + 5')
I usually work on Macbook 13'’ so I have to Zoom In and Zoom Out all the freakin time. The original shortcut for that was ‘cmd +’ and ‘cmd -’ respectively ( ‘+’ and ‘-’ are the plus and minus signs on your keyboard on left side of ‘delete’).
Hide/Show Rulers (New ‘shift+cmd+R')
I have lot of guides on the canvas, sometimes they can be very annoying.
Actual Size (New ‘cmd + 1')
Again, since the canvas size is quite small I like to see how the real pixels are panning out.
Show/Hide Layers and Inspector (New ‘cmd+shift+F)
In my opinion the Layers panel and Inspector usually take up lot of screen real estate. So to get rid of them when you don’t need it (you’ll need it quite often though) I like to hide them for time being.
Show/Hide Pixels (New ‘control+X’)
Very handy tool and shortcut when you need to view the Vector/Pixel version of your element.
To view some more custom shortcuts by Meng To visit his Design+Code page where he talks about some of cool things you can do with Sketch. You can also find all the Sketch 3 shortcuts on sketchshortcuts.com
If you thought this article was useful to you or errors, I’d absolutely love to hear back from you on twitter.
