Design

6 time-saving Sketch plugins to install right now—for free

4 min read
Andy Orsow
  •  Feb 16, 2015
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Sketch is quickly becoming the UI design tool of choice, so here’s our short list of the most helpful Sketch plugins we could find, just for all of you. This one’s about quality, not quantity, folks. Check out the links below and grab them all for free!

Managing your plugins

Before you grab all these cool new plugins, you’re going to need something to manage and update them. So go grab Sketch Toolbox. It’ll do the heavy lifting of installing and updating each plugin for you.

1. Dynamic Button

Buttons. Every product designer creates them, but no design tool makes it easy for us. Dynamic Button addresses that problem, helping you make text-layer-based buttons on the fly, which just makes sense.

 

2. Content Generator

Content Generator lets you fill out your designs with names, bios, photos, avatars, placeholder text, and more—all in just a few clicks. Which makes it ideal for whipping up mockups without having to dig around for images online.

3. Duplicator


Like the name suggests, Duplicator duplicates things quickly and easily. Use this to create perfect grids, lists, and other repeated elements.

4. Sketch plugins by Cemre Güngör

This robust group of plugins comes bundled together in one happy family. You trigger each of the functions below with a simple keyboard shortcut.

The set includes:

Scale half
Scales the currently selected object to half its current size. And it does it proportionally too, so there’s no weird distortion of the object.

Scale double
Proportionally scales the currently selected object to double its size.

Paste and swap
Pastes the image in the clipboard into the position and dimensions of the currently selected object, then removes the object. Useful for swapping assets.

Paste into
Pastes the image in the clipboard and masks it with the currently selected rectangle, sizing the image to fill the rectangle’s dimensions. Useful for pasting avatar images into placeholder rectangles.

Make guide
Makes the currently selected rectangle a transparent red and names it “Guide.” Useful for spec sheets.

5. Sketch Measure

Sketch Measure helps you provide measurements and design specs. Great for handing off designs to developers to make sure margins, placement, and padding are all as you designed.

6. Sketch Squares

Similar to Content Generator, Sketch Squares lets you replace or fill layers with photos pulled directly from Instagram.

Bonus! Sketch Shortcuts

No, it’s not a plugin. But Sketch Shortcuts is a super-helpful list of keyboard shortcuts for Sketch, along with tips on creating your own.

What’s your favorite Sketch plugin?

Have a plugin we missed? Let us know @InVisionApp!

Oh! And did you know you can drop Sketch files into InVision and automatically export your artboards as screens? It’s true.

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