- Scope
- Concept Design Development
- Tools
- Sketch
- Timeline
- Apr 2016 – 2019
- Platform
- Sketch plugin
Side project · Sketch plugin · 2016–19
Sketch Runner
Sketch Runner was born during the SketcHHackday hackathon organised by Precious Design Studio in Hamburg in 2016. In a couple of days we came up with the concept, built and published a Sketch plugin.
Problem
Getting around Sketch meant searching for actions through the menu.
What I did
In a couple of days at a hackathon we came up with the concept, built the plugin and published it.
Result
Sketch Runner won the hackathon and led to the Design Tools Network.
What it does
Runner helps you get around Sketch quicker with a command bar built for keyboard shortcuts. Stop searching for actions through your menu and start running commands directly from your keyboard.
The interface
One command bar with five tabs: run, goto, insert, create and apply. It comes in a light and a dark version.
What happened next
I was part of the team that built Runner at the hackathon and kept maintaining it for free for the community afterwards. It grew into a genuinely popular plugin, with daily active users at design teams in companies like Airbnb, Facebook and Spotify. Eventually it moved to a paid, Runner Pro model; I stepped away at that point, since I didn’t believe in making it a paid tool.
The part I’m proudest of is what came after: Runner’s main idea, a command palette to trigger any action from the keyboard, is the same pattern Figma later built into its own product, a genuine shift in how design tools work today. I’d made an early proof of concept of a command palette for Figma myself, as a Chrome extension, and one of the other Runner team members went on to join Figma, so that connection likely runs deeper than coincidence.