5 Sketch Plugins to Supercharge your Design Workflow

Work faster, better, and smarter, today.

An important part of the job for any designer is knowing how to work effectively with their tools.

The Sketch community has created countless plugins for you. Sadly, not all plugins are created equal. Having worked with Sketch for the last five years, here are the ones that have most dramatically improved my process.

Sketch Runner Pro

Sketch Runner Shortcuts

I’m going to start with the best. And, unfortunately, one of the most expensive. At $45 CAD this one isn’t cheap. But Oh Boy is it powerful. If you’re a fan of keyboard shortcuts, it can radically speed up the way you perform actions in Sketch.

Run any menu command at the touch of a few buttons.

Create and insert components.

Jump to different artboards.

Apply styles.

Even find and install other plugins.

Which plugins you ask?

How about these other ones I’m about to mention…

Get Sketch Runner Pro

Cluse

Cluse, for accessibility

Accessibility matters.

Cluse is the most comprehensive colour contrast plugin. It ensures your products are WCAG 2.0 accessible. Better still, it’s completely free.

Select any two layers and it will automatically check the contrast for you. High five if you passed. If not, it’s live preview features lets you edit your colours until the contrast is up to scratch.

Get Cluse

Angle

Angle templates

Looking to create beautiful perspective mockups for your portfolio at the click of a button? Angle has thousands of vector-based devices for you to instantly drop your designs into. The full suite is $79 but you can download 50 free mockups to sample before you buy.

If you’re regularly showcasing designs in presentations, it’s the perfect tool.

Get Angle

Anima

Anima Layout Tools

Anima sells itself as a tool for building high fidelity prototypes, but the real value for your day to day design work are its layout features. Create organised, flexible stacks and rows of objects. Perfect for building beautifully spaced groups of objects, that you can tweak and tailor with ease. If you’re ever used Figma’s Auto Layout features, this is pretty similar.

Get Anima

Abstract

Abstract Version Control

Ok, this last one is really an additional piece of software. But it connects through its plugin. If you’ve ever had to collaborate on files with other designers, this tool is priceless. It’s version management for your Sketch files. Like Github, but for design.

It allows entire teams to work on a single design file. Angle does the work of tracking and managing who’s changed what, so you can piece them all back together at the end. Easily grab updates from other individuals as you explore your own changes. This allows everyone to explore new ideas, while keeping a single source of truth.

It has great features for sharing in-progress work and getting feedback from stakeholders.

Once you’re happy with what you’ve created as a team, the built-in developer tools allow for a seamless transition into production.

If you’re not familiar with versioning principles, it can be awkward to get your head around at first. But once you’ve spent some time with it, you won’t want to go back.

Get Abstract