Plugin Developers

To add your plugin to Sketch Plugin Manager, register your plugin with the Sketch Plugin Directory by following their contribution instructions.

Tips

Sketch Plugin Manager uses Sketch Plugin Directory Plus to display plugins in its Catalog. Check there an hour after registering your plugin to verify it was added correctly and follow the guidelines below.

  1. Host your plugin publicly on GitHub so that Sketch Plugin Manager can use your GitHub repository to check for updates. If for some reason, you don’t want to do this, you should implement your own method of updating your plugin.

  2. When you register your plugin with the Sketch Plugin Directory use the following guidelines when adding it to plugins.json.
    • owner & name – These must match the owner and name of your GitHub repository. You can find the owner and name from the URL of the GitHub project https://github.com/{owner}/{name}. For example, the owner of this repository is mludowise and name is Sketch-Plugin-Manager.
    • title (optional) – This is the display name for your plugin. If this is not included, the name field will be used as the display name for your plugin.
      • Note that at least one of title or name is required. If you do not include at least one of these fields, Sketch Plugin Manager will not display your plugin in the Catalog.
    • author (optional) – The name of the plugin author. If this is not included, owner will be used instead.
    • description (required) – This should be a 1 sentence description of what your plugin can do.
    • homepage (optional) – This should point to a URL about your app. If it’s not included, your GitHub project homepage will be used instead.
      • If your plugin is not hosted on GitHub, this is required to direct users to a website where they can download your plugin from.
  3. It is highly recommended that you check your manifest.json file is valid JSON with a JSON Validator and include the following in your plugin’s manifest.json file:
    • version – This will be displayed in Sketch Plugin Manager to identify the currently installed version as well as the new version for updates. It’s highly recommended that you increment this when making updates to your plugin.
    • identifier – This should be a unique identifier for your plugin. Sketch Plugin Manager uses this identifier to match the user’s currently installed plugins to plugins registered in the Plugin Directory.
  4. To include an icon for your plugin:
    • Create a file in your plugin directory under {plugin name}.sketchplugin/Contents/Resources/icon.png.
    • It’s recommended that you use a minumum size of 300x300px so it displays nicely on retina displays.
    • Note that if your plugin is not hosted on GitHub, the icon will only be displayed in the Installed and Updates tabs and not in the Catalog tab.