In 2026, we made significant strides in the world of swift app development, shipping three major releases that have transformed the way you design and develop apps. Let's dive into the exciting updates that have taken our community by storm.

Building a Strong Foundation with Stacks and Frames

Our first release of the year, Athens, marked a major milestone in Sketch's history. At its core was something many of you had been requesting for a long time – stacks. This new layout tool is an evolution of auto layout, offering unparalleled flexibility and predictability. With stacks, you can create complex layouts that adapt to their container or content, controlling padding, alignment, distribution, and styling with ease.

But that's not all – we also introduced frames and graphics, two new container types that replace Artboards and are better suited for modern UI design. You can nest frames, style them with multiple properties, and give them a stack layout. Graphics are ideal for icons and illustrations, making it easy to create visually stunning designs.

Enhancing the Command Bar

The Athens release also brought significant improvements to the Command Bar. With the ability to quickly find and insert any component type using the S key, you can streamline your design process like never before. You can also swap components with ⌥⌘R, eliminating the need for deep menu diving.

We've also brought some of the Command Bar's capabilities to the Inspector, introducing a similar look and feel, along with keyboard navigation and shortcuts. The Command Bar is now an essential part of Sketch, and we're excited to build upon its potential in 2026 and beyond.

Designing for Glass

When Apple announced iOS 26, macOS 26, and Liquid Glass, we knew you'd need the right tools to design for this new technology. Our Barcelona release brought a beta version with a new glass effect, built from scratch to ensure accuracy. This feature gives designers a head start in preparing their apps for the official release.

Barcelona also introduced progressive blurs – linear and radial blur options with adjustable stops. You can move those stops freely on the Canvas and adjust them in the Inspector, making it easy to achieve the desired effect. We've also added a new fade effect, giving you instant transparency without the need for alpha masks. And, of course, concentric corners (or "Auto" corner style) automatically align and calculate layer corners based on proximity to their nearest container.

A Complete Redesign for macOS Tahoe

With macOS Tahoe, we knew it was time to give Sketch a complete redesign. Our Copenhagen release delivers exactly that – our biggest UI update since 2020. The goal wasn't just to give Sketch a fresh coat of paint; it was to improve how you work. And that's exactly what we've achieved.

The layer list now features a focus mode that shows only the selected layers and their relevant context, making navigation easier than ever. The Inspector has been rewritten from scratch, introducing floating panels for color and color variable selection, numeric fields that can be dragged without focusing, and alternate functions when you hold ⌥.

There are many more details to explore in our Copenhagen design, but we'll save those for a future post. For now, let's focus on the most exciting feature – the option to wrap stack contents. This feature has been highly requested since the introduction of stacks, and we're thrilled to bring it to both horizontal and vertical stacks.

We've also added one-click background removal for images, using Apple's on-device machine learning to ensure your images remain private. Your Mac or device never leaves your data, ensuring complete control over your designs.

Organizing Your Work with Folders

If you store and share documents in a Sketch Workspace, you know that organization has traditionally been straightforward – Projects and Collections. With our Copenhagen release, we've made things much more flexible. Projects and Collections are now simply called folders, which can be nested infinitely like those on your Mac.

With folders, you have the flexibility to organize your Workspace in any way that makes sense to you – by client, project, stage of completion, or a combination of all three. The possibilities are endless!

Sketch, Meet AI

We first explored the intersection of Sketch and AI over a year ago, but it might as well be a decade ago with the pace of innovation we're seeing in this space.

A lot has changed since then – we still believe strongly in privacy, that you should own your designs, and that AI models shouldn't be trained on anyone's work without their permission. However, we also believe in choice, which is why we've brought an MCP server to Sketch.

This feature gives AI clients direct access to any Sketch documents you choose, opening up a whole new world of possibilities – from exploring design trends to automating repetitive tasks. It's an exciting time for swift app development, and we're thrilled to be at the forefront of this innovation!