Sketch Libraries

Quick Start Guide for this amazing feature from 💎 47

Let begin with a basic definition: Libraries are just like normal Sketch files that are meant to contain ONLY Symbols.

The key difference is that Symbols in a Library can be accessed and used across all your Sketch documents, even shared with other designers across your team!

To be more clear about this, ANY Sketch file can be used as a Library. As long as you have symbols in it, it’ll work! In simple words, you would be telling your Sketch file “Please, allow me to insert Symbols from this other Sketch file in here”. Sounds simple right? …Because it is!

And this is how you start

1. Open the Sketch file/s where you want to include your main Library Symbols. Go to Sketch > Preferences

Step 1

2. The preferences dialog will pop up, you will see that the 5th tab (Libraries) is showing you which Libraries are linked to this file at the moment. If you can’t see the Library you want to add in the list, just click on “Add Library”.

Step 2

3. Here you can see I’ve selected from my locally saved Sketch files, my UI-Library, produced specially for this project as a Pattern Library. Once you have your selection, just click on Open.

Step 3

4. Now I can see my desired Sketch Library “linked” to this document. Once you see the Library you wanted to add in this list, just close the dialog and changes will be saved.

Step 4

Remove Library: If you want to remove any previously linked Library from your file, just select the element with the checkbox on the left, go to the ⚙ dropdown and click on “Remove file-name”.

So, here comes the best part… How my symbol instances get updated once I modify something in the Library containing it?

When you make changes to a Symbol in your Library, those changes will be synced across all documents containing that Symbol.

That means that once you have saved a modification in the Library file, and you open a document containing an instance of this updated symbol, you will get a notification (similar dialog to the example shown below) indicating the changes.

Once you have reviewed and confirmed that you actually want this update to be taken for your file as well, you will see how every instance of the symbol is magically updated without further effort form your side.

And now you are officially up to date with the rest of your team!

That was easy and fast right? The best of all, is that this process requires no other action from you than the described above.

As long as every member of your team is working on sketch files located in a Cloud (Box, Dropbox, One Drive, Google Drive…) you will have no other need than to push the Updated Library File to save modifications and they will receive a notification of this update that allows them to align immediately with just one click.

If you are a lone Designer-wolf or because of your set up, you happen to work alone, don’t worry — Libraries have plenty of benefits for you as well.

You will now be able to quickly insert Symbols of commonly used components straight from the Insert menu, as well as managing and updating design elements across multiple documents with one Library file.

I like to think of it as a CSS style sheet attached to a HTML. You can call these symbols from any of your files and include them without them actually appearing in the Symbols page of the file you are working on.

So imagine you could have a library for CTA’s only, another for headers, any categorisation that might come in handy for your project is possible and will be and stay organised at the end of the day.

This for example, can also be useful when working with different platforms and using separate sketch files for each, to avoid bunched files. Create all your symbols in your UI library and then readjust them for each platform setting it’s resizing properties right.

So, just a few more short clarifications and you are set to start trying this amazing feature…

Recognise which are your Library Symbols and which have been locally stored/produced in your file:

It’s important that you understand that changes to Library Symbols 🔗 can only be made in the Library file itself so no one can accidentally overwrite the original designs from their document.

If you double tap on a Library Symbol from any other file where it’s being used, you’ll see that a dialog appears alerting you of the fact that if you proceed with this action, the symbol will be copied to your local symbols page, and unlinked from the library (so you won’t get any more notifications if there is an update of this symbol in the main Library where it was created originally).

To sum up, here are the main key benefits you’ll get from Sketch Libraries:

• Empower your Design flow
• Consistency & Security
• Easy alignment across Team
• Avoid communication misunderstandings
• Clear status of updates in UI

Sketch 48 Updates

• Copying Library Symbols between documents now keeps them linked to the Library.
• Library previews can now be added by creating an Artboard titled “Library Preview” in the Library document.
• Improved performance for documents featuring many Symbol overrides.

Sketch 49 Updates

• Libraries on Sketch CloudFiles uploaded to Sketch Cloud can now be installed as Libraries directly from Cloud.

Demo Project — Freebies

I hope this got you motivated to start preparing your Sketch Libraries right now and get everyone aligned with your awesome designs!

If you want to try this feature and get a little practice before you start using it on real projects, I’ve created a dummy project for an Ice Lolly’s Online Store with 4 sketch files: Desktop, Tablet, Mobile & UI Library.

Feel free to download these files from the link below and put your skills to the test:

Sketch Library — Demo project files

Shout-out to Mohsen Hosseinian who served me as great inspiration with his free produced resource “Ice Cream Illustrations”.

Resources and other related interesting links:

Color Management, Sketch Cloud updates and Symbol Scaling in Sketch 48.

Libraries