A layer stack tends to grow while you work: Bring to Front mints one, an experiment gets its own, a reviewer adds theirs. These are the tools that keep the stack tidy.
Naming Layers
Double-click a layer's name (or pick Rename from its menu) to rename it inline; Enter commits, Escape cancels.
Layers also name themselves: while a layer still has its default name ("Layer 2"), the first label you finish typing onto one of its elements becomes the layer's name. Type "Checkout flow" onto the first shape of a fresh layer and the row reads "Checkout flow" too. Once a layer has a real name, from you or from auto-naming, it never renames itself again.
Restacking
Layers paint bottom to top, and the panel lists them top first. To restack:
- Drag a row up or down and drop it on the row whose place it should take; a line shows where it will land. The drag starts from anywhere on the row; a plain click still just activates the layer.
- Use Bring to Top or Send to Bottom in the layer's menu to jump a layer straight to either end of the stack.
The layer's menu opens when you right-click its row or click its ellipsis, hung to the left of the panel so the rows stay in view. Right-clicking a row also makes it the active layer, so every verb in the menu acts on the layer you clicked.
Moving Elements Between Layers
Select any elements, right-click, and open the Layer category. The Move to layer tiles (one per layer, each with a live preview of what's on it, shown once the tab has more than one layer and the Layers panel is switched on) move the whole selection in one click; the tile that's highlighted is where the selection currently lives. The menu stays open, so you can try another. Elements keep their relative order when they land.
Bring to Front and Send to Back on elements are layer moves too: the selection jumps to the top (or bottom) layer, and if that layer holds anything else, a fresh one is created at the edge of the stack for it. A layer those two buttons empty out is removed automatically, so casual front-and-back shuffling never litters the panel. A layer that was already empty, such as one you have just added from the panel, is left alone.
Merging Layers
Merge Up and Merge Down (footer buttons, bottom-left) fold the active layer into its neighbour; in a layer's menu the same two are Merge With Layer Above and Merge With Layer Below:
- The neighbour survives, keeping its name, visibility, lock, and opacity, and becomes the active layer.
- The merged elements keep their visual position: merging down places them on top of the lower layer's content, merging up tucks them beneath the upper layer's content.
- The buttons disable when there's no neighbour in that direction.
Clearing and Deleting
- Clear Layer (in the layer's menu, with a confirmation) deletes everything on the layer but keeps the layer itself, ready to be refilled.
- Delete (in the footer, or Delete Layer at the bottom of the layer's menu) removes the layer and everything on it. A populated layer asks first, quoting how many elements will go ("Delete “Sketch” and its 12 elements?"); an empty one goes at once, and the last remaining layer can't be deleted. Undo brings the layer and its contents back together.
- Layers with nothing on them read Empty under their name and show a dashed preview, so stale ones are easy to spot and prune.
Every operation on this page is a normal edit: it syncs live to collaborators and undoes with Cmd+Z / Ctrl+Z like anything else.
Merging is the tidy end to an experiment: sketch alternatives on their own layers, delete the losers, and merge the winner down into the main content.
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