I’m starting to be a huge advocate for Sketch. As I used it more, I started to find out neat little tricks to optimize my workflow. Here are some of the things that could speed up your workflow too.

1. Using text styles.

Text styles are a clear winner when you’re trying to save time and maintain consistency. A great way to manage this is to have a page within your Sketch file that contains your style guide. You can add to it as new elements are created, and they update anywhere they exist within your screens.

A great side effect of using font styles is the reduction in decision making time. It’s much easier to choose from a list you’ve already created, rather than think about the size, weight, color etc. on the spot.

Text Styles within a Style Guide

Pro tip: Remember to remove them when doing rapid visual iteration. It’s common to copy+paste a text field with styles applied and not realize it. You’re going to lose track of which text style you changed.

2. Moving around between artboards.

Sketch has a long list of intuitive shortcut commands. Here are some that you should know:

Navigating to a spot on any artboard in 2 steps.

command + 1 = zoom out to entire canvas z + click and drag = target zoom

I find this extremely helpful when navigating around a huge document. Zoom out, hit Z to bring up the magnifying glass, and zoom in on a specific area. It’s much faster than using command + plus / command + minus to incrementally zoom in and out (and/or spacebar + clicking and dragging).

Navigating around your artboards quickly

Grouping and organizing your objects.

command + G = group all selected objects into a folder

It organizes your layers and keeps your file manageable. It’s also easier to use Sketch’s alignment hints (option + cursor hover). Grouping is a simple task that can save you a lot of time in the long run.

3. How to use symbols even when you think it’s too late — by symbol swapping.

Let’s say you want to create a symbol to control all the alternating grey rows in this table:

Problem is, you already created all the rectangles. So you don’t want to waste what you’ve already made. What you can do is make the first grey rectangle a symbol (as your master):