Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Anyi Sun

When I first started using Sketch, I was amazed by how easy it was to create designs on it. Over time, as I delved deeper, I kept hearing about Sketch plugins and how useful they are. Wanting to become a more productive designer, I started to explore and use plugins, and now many plugins have become an essential tool for me when making designs.

Since you are reading this article, chances are you are wondering what Sketch plugins are and how to use them. This article will get you started with using Sketch Plugins.

What is a Sketch plugin?

Sketch plugins are tools to extend functionalities of Sketch made by third-party developers. Basically, they are additional features that are not available in the original Sketch app.

Why use plugins?

Sketch is already a pretty powerful tool itself, so why should you use plugins? Well, there are still pain points when using Sketch, and I am sure you have already experienced some of them.

For example, below are some of my pain points –

Spending too much time looking for image placeholders
Spending too much time copying and pasting Lorem Ipsum texts and trimming them to the appropriate length.
Can’t create flow charts easily.
Can’t upload color palettes created in a different Sketch file

And the list goes on.

Fortunately, there are awesome people out there who recognized these problems and built solutions for them, and these solutions are plugins.

Where to find plugins?

There are a few ways to find plugins. First, Sketch has a library of plugins available on its website. You can check it out here. You will be able to find curated plugin lists if you google “sketch plugins”. Some designers also share their favorite plugins on Medium.

To help you get started, I compiled a list of plugins that I found to be very useful. It is by no means a comprehensive list of useful plugins, but they are essential to me:

Craft: A suite of plugins that enables real-time collaboration, content generation, instant InVision synchronization, and quick duplications.

Iconfont: The plugin allows you to easily search and manage different styles of icons in Sketch.

Sketch Palettes: With this plugin, you will be able to save and load document and global colors.

Magic Mirror: You can create perspective mockups with this plugin.

Align To: Aligning objects drove me nuts sometimes. This plugin helped me align things much more easily in Sketch.

How to install a plugin?

There are different ways to do so. First, you can download it manually. Go to the plugin’s page, which is usually a GitHub page, and hit “Clone or download”, then “Download Zip” (see below image). Once the file is downloaded, open the “.sketchplugin” file to install the plugin.

Downloading the plugin from its GitHub page

There’s also an easier way to download and install, which is to use plugin manager tools such as Sketch Toolbox. They allow you to install and uninstall plugins easily. After installing Sketch Toolbox, open it and search for the plugin you need. Then, hit install and voila it’s done!

Downloading the plugin from Sketch Toolbox

Whichever way you choose to install the plugin, you will be able to find the plugin in Sketch’s plugin menu, and you will be all set to start using the plugin!

I have installed the plugin, but how do I use it?

You will be able to find instructions on the plugin’s website or GitHub page. There are also GIF/video instructions available sometimes, which is super helpful.

If you got the plugin manually from GitHub, you can also obtain the instruction from the “read me” the zip file you downloaded. These files usually have .md extentions, which can be opened by TextEdit on Mac and Notepad on Windows.

Final words

Don’t be afraid to try out different plugins. You can dedicate an hour every month to download and try out new plugins. This way, you can keep yourself updated on the new goodies. Researching plugins can take some upfront time investment, but it will save you lots of time down the line when you are using Sketch.

Share plugins you love to the design community. If you come across a super useful plugin, please share them with other designers, because most likely you will solve a big problem for them too. Also, developers spent hours building the plugin and they offer it for free, so please don’t hesitant to show your support and help them spread the word.

Stay organized. It is likely that you install a plugin and end up finding it not useful. The whole point of plugins is to help you become more productive, and keeping too many unused plugins is not helpful. Staying organized and deleting plugins that are not useful will contribute to your productivity goal.

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Getting started with using Sketch plugins was originally published in Prototyping: From UX to Front End on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Getting started with using Sketch plugins

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