Michal Ždanský Last week I covered a great one in a review the Sketch vector editor for Mac, which is an alternative to both Adobe Fireworks and Illustrator, that is, if you are not designing for printing, which is not possible due to the absence of CMYK in the application. Sketch is primarily intended for creating graphics with digital uses, such as designing websites or mobile apps.
With the latter example, the developers from Bohemia Coding went even further with the release of the Sketch Mirror iOS application. As the name suggests, the software can mirror designs from a Mac directly on the screen of an iPhone or iPad without the need for lengthy exporting and uploading images to iOS devices. This way, any small changes you make to the design can be instantly displayed, and you can watch live how the image on the iPad changes according to your adjustments.
To function properly, you need to work in Artboards, i.e. bounded spaces on the desktop, of which an unlimited number can be placed, for example one for each screen of the iOS application design. There is then a button on the Sketch bar on the Mac to pair with Sketch Mirror. Both devices need to be on the same Wi-Fi network to find each other, and it's okay to have both an iPhone and iPad connected at the same time. In the application, it is possible to switch on which device the designs should be displayed, but they can also be displayed on both devices at the same time.
The application itself is very simple. Once paired, it immediately loads the first Artboard and displays a bottom bar where you select project pages on the left and Artboards on the right. However, you can also use gestures to change pages and Artboads by dragging your finger vertically and horizontally. The first loading of the artboard takes about 1-2 seconds before the application saves it as a snapshot in the cache. Every time a change is made in the application on the Mac, the image is then refreshed with roughly the same delay. Every move of the object is reflected on the iOS screen usually within a second.
When testing, I encountered only two problems in the application - when marking objects, the outlines of the marking appear as artifacts in Sketch Mirror, which no longer disappear, and the screen stops updating. The only solution is to restart the application. The second problem is that if the list of artboards does not fit into the vertical drop-down list, you cannot scroll all the way to the end. However, the developers have assured me that they are aware of both bugs and will fix them in an upcoming app due out soon.
Sketch Mirror is clearly a narrowly focused application for graphic designers who work in Sketch and design layouts for iOS devices or responsive layouts for the web. If you also design applications for Android, unfortunately there is no version for this operating system, but it does exist Plugin to get Sketch up and running Scale Preview. So if you belong to this narrow group of designers, Sketch Mirror is almost a must, because it represents the fastest way to display your creations directly on your iOS device.
[app url=”https://itunes.apple.com/cz/app/sketch-mirror/id677296955?mt=8″]
