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Experimental Features

Last updated on 11 Jan 2023
1 min read

As part of our on-going efforts to improve the in-app experience and enhance our current feature set, we are introducing Experimental Features within Sketch.

These are fully functional features that are ready for some broader use, and we encourage you to share your feedback with us!

How to enable Experimental Features

We’ll auto-enable these features whenever they’re ready for broader sample testing by our users. You can find all the available Experimental features in the Sketch > Experimental Features menu. If you’d rather wait until these features are polished, you can easily opt-out or deactivate any of the experimental features through the same menu.

Active Experimental Features

Depending on the version of the Mac App you use, you might see a different set of Experimental Features available; check under each feature which version it was initially enabled for more details.

Better Smart Layout Reliability

Enabled in Sketch Beta 95

We’ve been working hard at identifying, fixing and improving Smart Layout pain points. The goal of this experimental version is to make Smart Layout more consistent and reliable.

Some of the areas of improvement are:

  • Adjacent spacings when hiding symbols. We’ve fixed and improved the behaviour when hiding the first or last element in a Symbol with Smart Layout.
  • Nested layouts. We’ve improved the behaviour of nested Smart Layout instances and Symbols with multiple overlapping text layers along the layout axis.
  • Effect of hidden nested symbols. You can now choose whether or not to preserve the space of a hidden Symbol using the checkbox under the Layout section of the Inspector.
  • Consistent Direction Behaviour. We’ve upgraded the Smart Layout configurations to work more reliably when using Left-to-Right and Top-to-Bottom, as well as Right-to-Left and Bottom-to-Top.

While these features are currently experimental, we want to make sure that they’re working for you before shipping. If you’ve run into any bumps, please let us know!