Your complete guide to annotations in Sketch

With annotations, sharing feedback and discussing details of your design has never been easier. You can pin a comment anywhere on the Canvas and strike up a conversation, right in the context of your work — in both the Mac app and web app.

Read on to find out more about annotations, and how to make the most of them in your documents.

How to add annotations to your documents

Whether you’re in the Mac app or web app, it’s easy to add annotations to your documents. Just press N or click the New Comment button in the toolbar, then click on the Canvas where you want your annotation to appear. Once you’ve added a comment, you can edit your original message, or add a new reply with more detail.

When you want to strike up a discussion with others, you can use @ mentions to notify other members of your Workspace and tag them into the conversation. And of course, you can use emoji and basic Markdown to help get your message across.

Annotations replace Artboard-level comments, and any existing Artboard-level comments you have in your documents will appear as an annotation in the top-left corner of the Artboard they relate to.

Viewing annotations

Annotations that you haven’t viewed yet — or ones that include unread replies — will appear as orange pins on the Canvas. When you’ve viewed an annotation or its replies, the pin will turn grey.

Want to see all the annotations on a specific page? In the web app, you’ll find them in the Comments tab in the sidebar. Clicking on any comment in the list will jump you right to the annotation on the Canvas, so you can instantly see it in context.

You can see all the comments on your current page on the Canvas or in the sidebar on the right of the web app. Click one to jump right to it.

You can delete an annotation by opening it, clicking the … button and choosing Delete…. You can also resolve annotations — more on that below!

And while comments on the Canvas can be super handy for discussing feedback in context, it can also get a little overwhelming you need to focus on the design itself. Luckily, it’s easy to hide every annotation via View > Comments > Hide Comments (CtrlN) in the Mac app or … > Hide Comments (ShiftN) in the web app.

Resolving annotations

Ready to wrap up a conversation? You can resolve annotations by clicking on the checkmark button on the top right of an annotation’s popover. You can also right-click on the annotation itself and choose Resolve.

Resolved annotations no longer appear on the Canvas by default, making it easier to spot discussions or feedback that are still ongoing. You can always go back and review any conversations you’ve resolved by choosing View > Comments > Include Resolved (⌃⇧N) in the Mac app, or filtering by Resolved in the Comments tab of the web app.

You can also re-open a resolved annotation to restart the conversation by clicking on that same checkmark button you used to resolve it in the first place.

Share links to annotations

Want to link someone to a specific annotation in your document? Simply click the … button in the annotation and choose Copy Link. Sharing feedback via other platforms like Slack or Notion just got a whole lot easier.

When someone visits the link, they’ll be taken right to that annotation in the web app. They’ll jump directly to focus on the annotation itself in context, whether it’s on an Artboard or just somewhere on the Canvas.

This — and everything else we talk about in this post — is all possible thanks to the Canvas view in the web app, which allows you to preview your entire Canvas exactly as you see it on the Mac app. As well as panning and zooming to see all your design elements, you can now also add and view annotations right on that Canvas.

Annotation notifications

When you create an annotation, or contribute to the conversation in a thread, you’ll automatically follow it and receive notifications for any new replies in the web app. If you want to keep your notifications more manageable, simply unfollow an individual annotation — or the entire document. If you haven’t commented on a document but want to get notifications about new comments, you can do that too.

To turn notifications for the entire document on or off, hit the bell icon at the top of the Comment tab of the web app’s sidebar. You can also follow or unfollow a specific conversation by opening the relevant annotation and clicking the … button then choose Follow to start getting notifications. Click it again to unfollow that conversation.

You can see all the comments for every document you follow in the Updates section of the web app. Click one to jump right to it in your document.

Now that you know how to make the most of annotations, why not give them a go? All you need to do is make sure you have our latest Mac update, and you’re all set to discuss your designs with teammates — right on the Canvas.