Release Notes
The updated Slack integration for Abstract Notebooks automatically shares notifications for notebook reviews to one or more of your Slack channels of choice, and unfurls Notebook links pasted into Slack.
Sometimes your ideas need a little more structure. Whether you need to track a project, take structured notes, or organize data sets, tables are a great way to organize your thoughts. Notebooks users can now add and delete tables in their Notebook by selecting the table icon in the context menu. Tables can be retrofitted to your requirements by resizing columns, adding cell colors, and multi-selecting rows, columns, and cells.
- Added the ability to edit and delete recorded decision blocks. While it's important to maintain the history of decisions in an initiative, sometime you need to correct a typo or add clarifying details or links.
- Updated the custom templates administration page to warn administrators of unsaved template changes, improve cursor movement between title and template body, and add hover text to edit and delete icons to improve accessibility.
- Users can now highlight text in a Notebook, paste a URL from the clipboard, and the text will become a link.
Images and designs are vital components to a building out a Notebook and explaining your work. We have improved the drag and drop functionality when repositioning images and designs in a Notebook to make interacting with these components easier. Here are a few updates we made to improve repositioning images and designs:
- When an image or design selected, the curser will become a hand-grab curser .
- The image or design selected will dim to illustrate that it is selected.
- A thumbnail preview of the design will display it is repositioned
- The cursor will reflect the exact location where the item will be repositioned to.
Participants in the FigJam Plugin Beta can now use the Abstract Notebooks plugin for Figma to add content and groups to Notebooks from FigJam.
Notebooks contributors can now edit their Notebook settings to share a Notebook to anyone with the Notebook link. Unauthenticated users viewing a Notebook will be able to read the contents of the Notebook (written and image content, comments, and reviews) but will not have edit access. These unauthenticated users can create an account and request organization access to edit the Notebook.
Contributors can now add decisions to Notebooks to show how and why a design choice was made. Notebook participants can view the series of decisions made in new section at the top of the Notebook. Record a decision title and, if desired, additional information about why, where, and how the decision was made. You can even link to detailed conversations, whether those are in a Review, Comment, meeting recording, chat thread, or elsewhere.
We've collapsed the Reviews section at the top of the notebook to show only the most recent review by default. You can click "View all" to expand and view each of the notebook's existing reviews. We've also moved the "Request review" button next to the status selector to make more room for the notebook's title.
Abstract Home
- Design isn’t linear. Moving from project to project as well as designing and building in tandem can lead to losing track of where we started. On Abstract Home, your most recently viewed notebooks and pressing action items are listed for you so that you can continue where you left off.
Reviews
- Notebook reviewers can now see all their reviews at a glance on the review tab. Reviews are categorized by Assigned to me, My Reviews, and Completed reviews. Users of both Branches and Notebooks can toggle between the reviews that are visible.
Custom Templates
- Templates save teams time and ensure that Notebooks have consistent content. Enterprise organizations can now extend the default set of Notebook templates to include custom-defined templates which meet the specific needs of their organizations.
- Notebooks users can easily cut and copy images and frames in a Notebook using common keyboard shortcuts Cmd/Ctrl+X and Cmd/Ctrl+C.
- Images and frames copied and pasted into the same Notebook will retain all annotations and comments. Those pasted to differing Notebooks will simply paste the image or frame.
- Copy and pasted Figma frames will continue retain the link to Figma.
Dependencies Updates
- We have updated various dependencies to ensure better performance and security. This helps in maintaining the app's robustness and reliability.
Improved Compatibility with Older Sketch Versions
- Understanding the diverse needs of our users, this update includes improved compatibility with older versions of Sketch. Now, users working on different versions of Sketch can experience seamless integration with our app.
Updated Emojis Library
- Emojis are a fun and integral part of digital communication. We've updated our emojis library to include the latest emojis, ensuring you have access to a wide range of expressions for your creative work.
This version includes minor bug fixes and performance improvements
User experience improvements, performance enhancements, and bug fixes*
* Bug fix to note: solved an issue where new team members could not be added as Guests or Viewers due to "not having enough contributor seats". This was illogical, as Guests & Viewers don't require paid contributor seats in order to be added to organizations.
FYI: this update will need to be installed "manually" as per the below:
- Click on Abstract in the Apple menu bar, usually located at the top of your screen.
- Click Restart and Install Update.
- Your app will restart, and you now have the latest version.

Performance upgrades and bug fixes
This version includes minor bug fixes and performance improvements
Compatibility with new Sketch version 95.2
This version includes security updates and minor bug fixes
Bug Fixes & Updates
- Fixed "infinite loader" bug when a) creating collections in projects without files, and b) clicking the COMMIT link from component preview page.
- Upgraded macOS desktop app to use Electron v21 (recommended).
Bugs Squashed:
- Fixes a critical issue that doesn't allow you to resolve Branch Conflicts when selecting Artboards while updating your branch from Main (Master).
- Fixes a bug which causes dozens of pesky "Generating preview" messages to stack up while importing large Sketch files with many elements.
Fixes incompatibility issues with Sketch 94, including the creation of new Sketch files via Abstract
Bugfixes:
- Fixed issue where Macs with M2 chips running Abstract would continue to use CPU power even after quitting the app.
- Fixed problem where in certain edge cases, the Branch name displayed on review-related comments & notifications could be wrong.
- Debug Logs now accurately capture all MacOS versions (including many older OS versions)
Changes:
- "Master" branch renamed to "Main"
- Artboards with custom names no longer erroneously lose their name upon switching their default Sketch artboard template.
- Auto-deleted preview images from old project branches & collections now restore faster.
- Removed functionality to add new or edit existing Adobe XD files (no longer supported).