Studio gets free-form groups, drag-to-select, and a proper undo

Studio groups the way you actually work

Grouping two layers used to snap them into a row or a column and shove them off where you put them. Now Group keeps the composition you built. Layers stay put, and the group moves and rotates as a single object. Previews and exports show the same thing the canvas does.

Groups you made before this release still use the old row and column layout, and none of them changed. The inspector says which one a group is using and lets you switch. So an old group can go free without you rebuilding it.

Ungrouping keeps what you had on screen. A layer that was sized by its parent holds the size it was rendering, instead of collapsing the moment the parent goes away.

Select and move without fighting the canvas

Drag any layer to move it, whether or not you selected it first. Drag across empty canvas and you sweep up everything inside the rectangle. Hold Shift to add to what you already have. The selection also exposes rotation now, and it snaps as you turn.

In the layer list, Shift-click picks a range and Cmd/Ctrl-click toggles one row at a time. Space or the middle mouse button pans.

Locks hold. If a layer is locked, or sits inside something locked, you cannot move it, delete it, or drag it somewhere else in the tree.

Alignment that matches what you see

Alignment now uses the box a layer actually occupies on screen. A rotated layer aligns by its rotated bounds. Text that sizes to its own content aligns at the size it is really rendering, and an image that keeps its proportions aligns by what you can see rather than the box behind it.

Sizing modes survive the alignment. Select several layers and you get a count, the values they share, the ones that differ, and controls to line them up or space them evenly.

An alignment that would not move anything no longer costs you an undo step.

Undo that covers the whole action

A drag is one undo, not forty. So is a keyboard command that touched six layers at once. History now covers the frame's size and background color alongside the layers, and redo is Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+Z.

Press Escape mid-drag and the scene goes back to where it started. Switch to another frame and come back, and its history is still waiting.

The inspector says what it means

Sizing modes are called Fixed, Fit content and Fill parent. The panel shows you where the selected layer sits in the hierarchy, and it explains why a layer inside an auto-layout group cannot be dragged anywhere it likes.

The percentage Scale artwork box is gone. Resize with the canvas handles or the width and height fields. Drag a handle on a free group and you scale the composition inside it. Drag one on an auto-layout group and the container resizes while its children reflow.

Your work survives a bad moment

Two people on the same design no longer overwrite each other. The second save tells you the design has moved on, then offers you the latest version or the chance to keep yours.

If a save fails, the design stays on screen and Studio holds a recovery draft for you. Retry it, restore the draft, or download it and deal with it later. Reload the page or lose your connection mid-edit and that draft is still there.

Renaming a design no longer counts as changing it. Designs updated through the API get the same protection.

Select and Multi-select stopped being a one-way door

Changing a Select property to Multi-select used to cost you the option list and every choice already made. Now both come across with the property. It saves straight away without a warning, because widening one choice into a list cannot lose anything.

Going the other way keeps the first choice on each card, page or customer and drops the rest. That one still asks first, and it tells you what it is about to do.

Also in this release

An X post or thread that runs over the limit gets caught before anything is sent, so a thread can no longer fail halfway through.