The fastest way to get fluent in any design tool is to learn its shortcuts. I used Sketch as my daily driver from 2014 until a few years ago, when most of my work moved over to Figma. These are the shortcuts I leaned on—still useful if you’re on Sketch today.
This isn’t a comprehensive list—if you want every shortcut, the official Sketch docs have them. These are the ones that have earned their place in muscle memory.
Command Bar
If you only learn one shortcut, learn ⌘K (or just S). It opens the Command Bar, which lets you search for any menu action, jump to a layer, insert a symbol or run a plugin without leaving the keyboard. It replaces most of what the Sketch Runner plugin used to do, plus a lot of menu hunting.
General
- Open Command Bar
- ⌘K or S
- New document
- ⌘N
- Open Settings
- ⌘,
- Open Document Settings
- ⇧⌘,
- Toggle interface
- ⌘.
- Switch to Canvas View
- ⌃1
- Switch to Components View
- ⌃2
Insert layers
Sketch uses “Frame” now instead of “Artboard”—same idea, new name.
- Frame
- F
- Rectangle
- R
- Oval
- O
- Line
- L
- Text
- T
- Vector
- V
- Symbol
- Y
- Draw from center
- ⌥ while drawing
- Square aspect ratio
- ⇧ while drawing
Canvas
Centering and focusing on selections is essential when you’re working with a lot of frames.
- Pan canvas
- Space+ drag
- Zoom in
- ⌘+
- Zoom out
- ⌘-
- Zoom to 100%
- ⌘0
- Zoom to fit all layers
- ⌘1
- Zoom to fit selection
- ⌘2
- Center selection
- ⌘3
- Show/hide pixels on zoom
- ⌃P
- Show/hide pixel grid
- ⌃X
Layers
⌘-click is the single most useful Sketch interaction—it deep-selects any layer regardless of how nested it is.
- Deep select hovered layer
- ⌘+ click
- Show distance to another layer
- ⌥ hover
- Duplicate in place
- ⌘D
- Duplicate behind
- ⇧⌘D
- Duplicate and move
- ⌥+ drag
- Group
- ⌘G
- Ungroup
- ⇧⌘G
- Hide/show layer
- ⇧⌘H
- Lock/unlock layer
- ⇧⌘L
- Resize by 1px
- ⌘+ arrow
- Resize by 10px
- ⇧⌘+ arrow
- Pick color
- ⌃C
Text
- Change typeface
- ⌘T
- Bold
- ⌘B
- Italic
- ⌘I
- Underline
- ⌘U
- Increase font size
- ⌥⌘+
- Decrease font size
- ⌥⌘-
- Align left
- ⇧⌘{
- Align center
- ⇧⌘|
- Align right
- ⇧⌘}
- Paste as rich text
- ⌥⇧⌘V
Align and arrange
Sketch eventually added native alignment shortcuts—back in 2018 I had to set these up manually in macOS System Preferences. Don’t bother now; the built-ins work.
- Align left/right/top/bottom
- ⌃⌘+ arrow
- Align horizontally (center)
- ⌃⌘H
- Align vertically (middle)
- ⌃⌘V
- Bring forward
- ⌘]
- Bring to front
- ⌥⌘]
- Send backward
- ⌘[
- Send to back
- ⌥⌘[
- Add stack layout
- ⌘L or ⇧S
Sketch Runner
Sketch Runner was the must-have plugin for years—Alfred for Sketch. Search, insert, replace components from anywhere with a few keystrokes.
The Command Bar (⌘K) now covers most of what Runner did natively. Runner still has a slight edge for component browsing in very large libraries, but for most people the built-in Command Bar is enough.
References
This post started as a talk I gave at Salesloft in August 2019. The shortcuts have been refreshed for current Sketch.