Are you new to the Penpot community? That's how you can get started!

We want to say hello to everyone who is new to our community due to the recent events. We would like to help out people to get started with Penpot.

Here you can find a list of video tutorials to help you get started. Our most recent tutorial “How to design a smartwatch UI in Penpot” will show all the latest Penpot’s capabilities. We also have a User Guide, where you will find (almost) everything you need to know about how to work with Penpot, from the interface basics to advanced functionality.

If you are looking for a hands-on Tutorial, we have Penpot’s upcoming onboarding to be launched in the next release, aka Design Bottle Challenge! This tutorial will guide you through the very basics of Penpot.

Besides all that, Penpot community is always here to help. We have the “Ask the community category” where you can throw any questions you may not find anywhere else in the community.

Recent FAQ

Flexlayout

Flexlayout is a top request in the new feature category. As for right now, we are in a very advanced state of development, we hope to have news soon. You can take a sneak peek of the development here: Flex Layout sneak peek. And join the conversation here: What are Penpot plans for Autolayout? - #11 by diacritica

EDIT: the Flexlayout is out! 08· Flexible Layouts

Import files from Figma

This is a request that we have received a lot in the past days. In our previous research for this feature, we flagged some improvements in Penpot that ideally should be done before in order to have smooth transitions. We are currently rethinking how we could tackle this situation due to the change in the needs of the community.

In the meantime, the best option is to export your Figma files or objects to SVG and then import them to Penpot.

For more information about this, join the conversation here: Feature Request: Ability to import Sketch, Adobe XD or Figma files into Penpot - #2 by diacritica

Component states and microinteractions

We are also reworking the components features. We understood that our first version of it could be improved both in the flow and abilities. You can check this post in the community and give us your feedback: Where is my component?

Also, here you can see more details on this rework and how we have divided it into several steps.

Plugins system

Another feature we have in the stage of research is a system for plugins. We understand that plugins are key to empower the community to contribute to Penpot, adding capabilities that the team can’t even imagine.

Desktop app

This request is coming in different form to try to solve different issues, as performance, offline mode or “browser free” focused design. We understand this possible Desktop app does not have to solve it all. To help understand better your need, please join discussion, here in this two post: Turning PenPot into an installable PWA - #3 by RenanMayrinckDesign How can I make Penpot work offline? - #3 by diacritica

DarkMode

Our team have been rethinking our user interface. From accessibility, how to simplify it to new themes. We are planning to create and add the following themes:

  • Light
  • Dark
  • Dimmed

You can check the stage it is here: Taiga

Also, explore how to allow users to create and add custom themes. Any thoughts? Join the conversation: Thoughts on Penpot’s User Interface

View mode & Code Inspect

Our product and features are developed for cross-domain teams. A good example of that is our View mode and Code Inspect. Penpot wish to bring developers, technologists, and other stakeholders into the design process. Current design collaboration schemes are still monochrome, we want to make designers not only first-class citizens in open source but in the entire development process.

You can find more information about it:

How to contribute

At the moment the best ways to support Penpot are bug hunting, translations and creating libraries & templates. This way will improve the tool while helping other users.

13 Likes

I’m excited for the plugin system to launch. Here are some ideas:

  • Extract colour palette from image
  • Lorem ipsum generator
  • AI-generated fake avatars
  • Coolors plugin
  • Accessibility checker (colour contrasts between text and background)
4 Likes