over 4 years ago from Serkan Urhan, Design Team Lead @ Nesine.com
Why old alignment system changed? When align horizontally which criteria using?
New Version Alignment; http://i.giphy.com/l0HlvGYFr9O47Jjhe.gif
Old Version (I LOVED); http://i.giphy.com/l0MYG2FUEIRrrReZq.gif
Great, now I can make my shapes moonwalk! 
:D hahaha lol
Feature, not a bug
It's been doing that since V40.
Why don't they copy Illustrator's way of aligning? Works perfect.
Because Sketch users hate Illustrators unobtrusive it-just-works philosophy.
So we can no longer use center align, to find the center of multiple selected objects? :( What the new align change does, is something I could already do before...if I wanted to.
This is where it'll affect me. I've grown accustomed to being able to throw a rectangle on the page and center-align it to the background…now it depends on the layer order. Not a positive change, in my opinion.
At least if there was an option in Sketch's preferences...
Illustrator's solution for alignment is a breeze and it is one of my most used features. Consider you have 2 objects, one long and one short. If your setting is "align to artboard" and you click align vertical center, both of them will align in the vertical middle of artboard. If your setting is "align to selection", the short one will come to the vertical middle of the long one. Finally, if you select "align to key object" and click on the object you want to assign as "key object", objects will come to the vertical middle of that object no matter of their heights. I can't think o f any scenario these three options won't be able to solve when it comes to alignment. I am expecting exactly this solution with Sketch.
i desire this solution for sketch
I prefer Sketch's keyboard shortcuts for align to object / align to artboard. Hold option to align all objects to the artboard,
Align to key object is nice, but I think the same thing could be accomplished by aligning to the first selected item. Or, use illustrators shortcut for aligning to key object by reselecting an object without shift held down to highlight it as the key object.
Their Update Log; - The horizontal and vertical alignment options now take the middle of the layer at the bottom, rather than the average of the selected layers for more predictable results
That actually makes sense. If I'm going to align multiple elements, I want to know which particular element it is going to align itself to, rather than an average.
So, based on the update, it'll align itself to the bottommost layer. Whichever element you want to be fixed, make that the bottommost.
@Serkan, if you don't want Element 1 (in your example) to move, place it below Element 2 in your layers.
I never look at my layers when aligning objects. Now I have to pay attention to the order of the layers to predict outcome of the alignment.
Omnigraffle aligns the objects to the first shape you select. Much easier to control and predict the alignment of shapes. Having said that I had no problem with how Sketch behaved before this update.
I agree that it's better to align the elements to the first selected layer than based on the layer order. Maybe Bohemian Coding could consider doing it the Omnigraffle way.
But the update is actually an improvement for me, since before this, I could never predict which X or Y value my aligned objects would end up with. Whereas now, I have a little more control.
"Omnigraffle aligns the objects to the first shape you select. Much easier to control and predict the alignment of shapes. Having said that I had no problem with how Sketch behaved before this update."
This 1000000%.
I'm all for opinionated design, but if it isn't already, this should be a setting not the default and only behavior.
Take your upvote and get out of here.
Why did you do it sketch? Unnecessary update. :'(
How I think a good alignment should work:
No moonwalking: align only once
Use largest element as baseline: don't move both elements, only the smallest one
Align always by pixel or provide a setting for it
I noticed that Photoshop and XD seems to work this way but for example Illustrator does the dancing, moves both elements and messes pixels.
Just commenting in the hopes that someone reads this. Please change it back. It's awful now.
Is sketch on drugs? 
I like choosing which layer I want things aligned to (like the "key object" in Illustrator). I use this plugin for this. Has a shortcut and you choose the layer in a dropdown: https://github.com/webpatch/Handy-Tools
The new works much better for me. The old one was so unpredictable.
Once understand how it works, it actually make sense. It reminding me to put key layer of a group to bottom. Things like wrongly positioned pasted layers, I used to align to side (twice) then align to centre (twice). Now you only need to align centre after paste.
I use the plugin AlignTo in order to choose object to align to, highly recommended.
With the keyboard shortcuts it's both faster and gives me better control of what's happening. I mostly use cmd+opt+ctr+ [h/v/a] for horizontal, vertical and center/center align respectively.
Having to check your layers before aligning is not great UX. Also, it makes aligning objects across artboards (something I do quite often) dependant on the position of the artboard in the layers stack. Weird. If there needs to be a change (I was fine with Sketch 40's way of doing things), my preference would be to include something like how Illustrator or Inkscape does things: having a key object and highlight it. The position in the layers stack should have no impact on alignment.
I feel for you.
I agree it really sucks. The way it works before was more UX. There was less need to click to have the expected result. Now we have to take care of the layers orders. The way Illustrator does it, is bad UX because it always add an extra click to select the referent.
Oh god, I thought I was the only one going insane on this. Can we get a fix / update or a choice?! Pleaaaaaase!
Funny enough, I thought Sketch aligned to the largest object this whole time. I never had any issues aligning things before this update, but now things seem to jump around. I don't like that Sketch is now dictating the order of my layers, esp. when you export to prototyping apps, where layer order and grouping matters a lot.
Another point, during the concept and development stage, I pay little to no attention to layer order, because you are trying to move quickly. This is precisely the point where you would use quick tools like the alignment bar to make quick adjustments. That workflow is now forces you to change your behavior instead of working with you.
Maybe an option to choose between the old and new alignment system would be interesting?
what a terrible decision
I'm kinda biased but I have this Sketch plugin which center-aligns layers horizontally and vertically "the old way" using ⌘ + [ and ⌘ + ]. It can also align any layer to the artboard (w/o selecting the artboard) with ⌘ + ⌥ + [ or ].
(And also actually has some other nice quick manipulation actions :))
Thanks, I thought I was the only one that hated it. I hope the Sketch Gods read DN.
Or you can contact them on the support. I did it because new alignment really sucks.
Unbelievably terrible. Stop messing with stuff that works!
I've recorded this with Sketch 40
and installed the update
and then recorded this with Sketch 41
Sketch 40 Both of them moves and meets at the center.
Sketch 41 Only the small one moves aligning itself to the larger one, which I liked better.
It's working as expected for me :/
That's probably because shape 1 is the bottom most layer.
yeap! Just tried it reordering layers and the moonwalk effect comes to life
I didn't notice any changes. Can anybody provide an example (gifs, screenshots, anything) ?
New Version Alignment; http://i.giphy.com/l0HlvGYFr9O47Jjhe.gif
Old Version (I LOVED); http://i.giphy.com/l0MYG2FUEIRrrReZq.gif
Your old version doesn't show anything happening
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