Changelog

Favorite projects

You're now able to favorite projects and have them appear as shortcuts in the sidebar. Simply click the star icon in the header when you're looking at the issues of a project, or open the command menu and select "Favorite project".

Cycle startup-time and renaming

Cycles have gained some additional functionality this week. In case your team is on holiday or you want to make room for that Hackathon, you can now move the start time of individual cycles forward (and backward). You can now also give rename cycles to describe what you're working on in each cycle.

API Documentation

We added some preliminary API documentation. You own your data in Linear and our GraphQL API lets you query all of that data. In addition to querying, the Linear has full support for mutating all entities. Any mutations you make via the API are observed in real-time by all clients, giving you immense powers of writing your integrations.

In the months to come, we will improve the API and documentation, but we wanted to give the courageous among you early access to the API. We can't wait to see what you build with it.

Bootstrap speed

If you haven't noticed yet, we're obsessed by speed. We felt that hot reloads could be faster. Hot reloads are reloads of the client where the client doesn't need to do a full synchronization with the backend and they are much more common than cold reloads. We added some clever optimization on how data is deserialized and are now seeing 4x faster hot bootstrap times with around 2000 open issues. The more open issues you have, the bigger the difference is.

Faster search for issues using the command menu

You can now quickly search for issues using the command menu. Simply open the command menu and start typing. Search results will appear after all other actions.

Other improvements and fixes

• You can now customize your avatar by uploading a new image in settings
• Load filter action has been fixed and remapped to CommandShiftf
• Suspended team members will no longer show up in assignee menus
• Suspended team members are now rendered differently in the UI so that you can more easily see if an issue has been assigned to a suspended user
• You can now filter for issues that have been assigned to suspended users
• Search now uses a better search algorithm
• Creating sub-issues will now make you the assignee if you've opted into auto-assign new issues to yourself

Cycle cooldown

Some teams like have dedicated downtime between cycles to "cool down" or catch up on other tasks before jumping into the next iterative development cycle. Linear now supports configuring a cooldown period in the team settings.

Inline label creation

Creating new labels is now a lot faster. Previously, one had to jump to team settings to add a new label, but now you can do that straight from the command menu (Cmdk). When you have an issue selected, hit l to add a label to the issues, then select the "Create new label..." action.

Improved todo lists

Todo lists in issue descriptions have always been a great way to keep track of things that are still needed to be done to complete the issue. Now todo lists have received better styling and more importantly, you can check off individual items without having to go into edit mode.

To create a todo list in an issue description, type "[ ] todo" or press CtrlShift7.

Other improvements and fixes

• External links will now be opened in a new window by default. Preferences have been added to toggle this behavior
• All controls in the issue detail pane can now be reached via Tab
• ShiftEnter will now generate a line-break in the editor
• Fixed issue where reverting a pull request would close the associated issue
• Linear will now automatically upgrade itself if its in the background when it detects a newer release
• When @mentioning a user in the issue description, that user will now get added as a subscriber to the issue
• Fixed issue where navigation actions would trigger inadvertently
• Fixed issue with modifying pre-filled issues
• Links to team settings in the pre-populated issues will now point to the correct team's settings.

Video uploads and player

For new designs or bug reports, videos can tell more than pictures or words. Linear now supports video uploads as well as Loom embeds.

To embedd a video, just drag and drop a video file onto the issue description or comment field or paste in a Loom link and it will automatically be embedded.

Easier way to send feedback

We want to learn as much as possible from you on how we can improve Linear. We've added an easier way to send feedback from the app sidebar. We also have a new Slack community, the link of which you can find in the settings menu.

Copy issue link

In addition to copying the issue id and git branch name, you can now also easily copy a link to the issue. Use the icon on the right corner or use the action menu (copy issue url).

Other improvements and fixes

• Added clear-button for search field
• The project name in the project editor now automatically receives focus
• Improvements to sync reliability
• Fixed a problem where one could accidentally archive a project instead of an issue within a project

GitHub Pull Request improvements

New automation for PR reviews

Linear has supported GitHub pull request automation for opened and closed PRs since day one. We noticed it's common for teams to separate the time they work on an issue, and the time when an associated PR is waiting to be reviewed. You can now automate this by creating a new workflow state (e.g. In Review) and have Linear move issues to it when a review has been requested on an associated pull request.

Linear will now also show when a review has been requested on an associated pul request.

Reopen issue when pull request is reverted

Not all merges go well and sometimes you'll need to revert a merged PR. Linear is now aware of these reverts and will automatically reopen the associated issue so you won't forget about it.

De-associate pull requests from Linear issues

We added new actions to de-associated pull requests from issues. You can find them from the command menu by typing "github".

Pull request links

Lists and board now include links to the associated pull requests. This makes it much faster to open the pull request of an issue, or to glance what issues have PR's open.

Subscription management

Subscribing (Shifts) and unsubscribing (CmdShifts) to issue updates is now built into the issue comment section. You can quickly toggle your subscription and see who else is subscribed to the issue. To keep your team up to date, you can also subscribe others to an issue.

Other improvements and fixes

• Links in the project description can now be opened from the project list
• Improved data sync reliability
• Fixed workflow status sorting in certain cases
• Fixed moving an issue to a new team when they have sub-issues
• Fixed board ordering bug
• Fixed bug causing uncompleted issues from moving to next cycle

New search

The search view has been redesigned and the search input has been moved to the sidebar. With this change, search is faster to use and you're also able to filter the results of your query the same way as you would filter other views.

Improved list multi-select

Linear has always had basic multi-selection of issues for applying shortcuts and actions to several issues at once. To make this easier and faster, we added more ways to select multiple issues and accidentally discovered even new UI patterns (tweet).

There are now four ways to select issues in list view:

• Select issues individually by clicking the checkbox or pressing x
• Select range by first selecting one issue and then selecting another one while holding down Shift
• Hold Shift and press Arrow Up/Arrow Down to expand selection
• Hold Shift and move the mouse over other issues to select

Other improvements and fixes

• Improved code highlighting performance
• Improved page title updating
• New actions for copying the URL to the active project and current view
• New shortcut for assigning issue to a project (Shiftp)
• You are now redirected to the previous view after archiving an issue
• Creating new issues in the Active Issues view now sets their statuses to active
• My Issues view has a new welcome screen for new users
• Notifications are now grouped per issue in emails
• Fixed bug on keyboard actions after issue selection
• Minor visual updates to boards

Boards

Linear now has better support for boards, with a refreshed design. Unlike lists, which are more information-dense and ordered by priority, boards offer manual ordering via mouse drag&drop.

Similar to lists, boards are grouped by the teams' workflow states and can be filtered using our new filters. You can now also perform keyboard shortcut actions hovering over the card of an issue.

Both active cycle and project pages can now be viewed in board view mode. Just toggle the view from the top right corner, or switch with Cmdb shortcut. To view all your issues in board view mode, select Board option from the team sidebar.

Filter improvements

After adding new filters last week we shipped several improvements to them:

• Filters can now be applied using free text search on any field of an issue. For example, press f to open filter menu and type done to filter by this status
• Assignee and created by filters now supports me as a shortcut for the current user
• The current user is now shown as the first option for filtering and changing assignee in the action menu
• Filters for the same type are now visually grouped
• New filter options to filter by no cycle, no project and unassigned

New preferences

The preferences page now features a new look with more information about individual preference options.

Three new personal preferences were added:

• Default home view - You can now configure what view Linear should open by default
• Auto-assign to self - Issues you create are automatically assigned to yourself
• On git branch copy, move the issue to in progress - If you're like us and use git branch copy action (CmdShift.) when starting work on an issue, toggle on this small automation

Other improvements and fixes

• Added new action: Duplicate as new issue… CmdShiftc
• Improved the action menu's performance and responsiveness
• Cycle and project links in issue details have been updated to work both as open and change actions
• Filters are now team-based, so you can keep different filters open for each team
• Several small improvements to the projects list
• Projects can now be removed via the action menu
• URLs for uploaded images are now cleaner and the filename is used in Slack notifications
• Canceling new issue composition or issue editing now returns you to the last view you had open before opening edit mode
• Fixed Esc behavior when opening an issue through a link
• Fixed a bug where archiving an issue sent unrelated Slack notifications
• Fixed a bug which lead to high idle CPU usage

Filters

Once your team's issue count starts growing, filtering becomes necessary to narrow down the scope of issues that you want to look at or manage. We gained valuable experience from our initial filter design, and wanted to improve the design in two ways:

1. The filter UI should scale with more options and filter types
2. You should be able to use filters 100% via the keyboard

This week we fully redesigned and reimplemented how filters work. In any view that lists issues - including the board - you can access filter via the f shortcut. Once a filter has been applied it can be removed with the Shiftf shortcut.

Filters are now view based, so you can, for example, apply different filters to "My Issues" and "Active Issues" and jump between these views without losing each filter.

Other improvements and fixes

• Project status can now be changed via actions and the s shortcut
• Projects are sorted according to their status
• Labels can now be modified from the team settings
• Fixed navigation issues, the back-button will now yield more expected results
• Cycle burn-up graphs have less crowded x-axis labels for long cycles
• @Mentioning users now work better if you have a substantial amount of team members
• Peek now deactivates if you hide the client by Option-clicking your desktop on a Mac.
• Fixed issues with project target date entry on Safari
• Keyboard help has been updated
• Issues are now longer selected when typing x with the command menu open
• Modal states are now visually more distinguishable

Projects

To set direction and long term goals for the team it is often useful to plan larger initiatives or features alongside all the other work that needs to happen.

With Linear Projects, we wanted to make exceptionally easy and fast to create a project, and start refining it as you go. You can optionally set a target date, description, and link to the product spec so that the necessary context is there.

You can break the individual work to multiple Cycles, and make constant progress each week to complete the project.

This is our first release of Projects and we're excited to continue expanding them to make it easier for you to design and build software.

ProTip: If you need to group issues but they are too small to use Projects, you can link them together as sub-issues. Select an issue, and from command menu pick Set parent issue.

Other improvements and fixes

• Archived issues can now be accessed via their URL and no longer return a 404
• Scroll lists with Ctrln and Ctrlp shortcuts
• Issues are now deselected in multi-select when changing views.
• Hovering over sub-issues now support keyboard shortcuts
• Improved editor styles
• Improved styling for All Cycles view
• Improved messaging for git branch name copying
• Better error handling for failed user actions
• Optimized initial application data loading performance
• Don't trigger issue peek in inputs (tip: show issue peek by pressing Option in lists)
• Fixed setting parent issue when creating a new sub-issue in some views
• Fixed duplicate linking with GitHub pull requests
• Fixed command menu mouse focus and styling for Safari

Cycles are here!

Cycles are no longer a developer preview feature and are available to every team. We've added a neat side-bar to the cycle view (Cmdi) that gives you a great overview of the cycle. It helps you figure out where you're at in the cycle and what the workload for each of your team-members looks like.

You can enable cycles in your team settings

Email notification improvements

Linear was a bit too eager to send emails on unread notifications. We've tweaked the delays to be based on the urgency of the notification.

• Unread urgent notifications are delivered via email after 30 seconds
• Unread mention notifications are sent after 5 minutes
• Unread issue assignment notifications are sent after 1 hour
• Unread comment notifications on issues that you subscribe to are sent after 1 hour

Other improvements and fixes

• Comments now have a submit button. If you still prefer to submit via the keyboard, CmdEnter is there to help you
• The list group rows received a small + button that lets you quickly create a new issue for that workflow state
• The action menu has new colors in dark mode
• A toast is now displayed when saving team settings
• Added "Remove from cycle" command
• The issue's back button now works the same as hitting Esc
• Cycles and projects are now automatically removed from issues that are moved to another team
• Fixes to some rendering issues with the cycle burn-up chart
• Fixes a problem where the action menu would not always show up when pressing Cmdk

GitHub workflow configuration

GitHub integration is one of our time-saving features in Linear. It lets Linear manage the status of issues based on associated GitHub pull requests. Previously, if you had the integration enabled, a pull request would automatically move associated issues into the In Progress status once the PR has been opened, and into the Completed status upon PR merge.

We wanted to give teams more control over their workflows and now you can customize the automation by setting your own workflow status for PR open and merge events. For example, to separate issues waiting for a code review, create a In Review status for your team and associate PR open to trigger this status. You can also omit the automation for each step and configure automation for each team separately.

We also improved how multiple pull requests per issue are treated. If your issue has several open pull requests open, we'll wait for all of them being merged until we trigger the merge automation step.

Cycle improvements

Cycles are still under active development and available under Developer Preview option in your personal settings. This week we shipped several cycle improvements:

• Weekends are now drawn to estimation chart, and also taken into account with estimation calculations
• Several fixes to cycle progress calculation and drawing
• Issues are associated with the cycle if the issue is created from the cycle view
• When enabling cycles an active cycle is created instead of having to wait a week for the planned cycle to start
• Issues in My Issues are grouped by cycle and ordered by cycle start date
• Improvements to keyboard shortcuts when adding issues into cycles
• Fixed workflow ordering on cycle views

Other improvements and fixes

• Better dark mode color scheme and other style tweaks
• @mentions and links are now more visible in comments and issue descriptions
• Added links to toast messages when moving issues between views for easier navigation
• Move visible default label colors and styling in lists
• Added issue filtering options for priority and labels
• Bulk actions for issues are now shown in more views if they share the same team
• Fixes to toast messages when inviting new teammates
• Fixed issue with keyboard shortcuts not always working in the issue view
• Several fixes to action menu
• Fixed issue saving when image upload is still in progress

Cycles

You might know them as sprints, but we decided to call them cycles to give them meaning outside of the agile methodology. Whether you work in agile ways or not, cycles provide a great way of planning and measuring iterative development cycles. Take some time each week (or weeks, depending on how long you configure your cycle to be) to plan what your team is supposed to work on next, then let Linear measure how you're executing towards that goal.

You can enable cycles in your team settings, but need to first opt-in to see Developer preview in your preferences. You'll choose how long each cycle is and what day of the week they start and Linear takes care of the rest. Cycles are automatically created and closed based on the selected schedule and any unfinished work in each cycle will automatically be moved to the next cycle.

Estimation

You can now opt in to show time estimates for your issues. Estimation complements cycles and lets your team communicate the complexity of each issue.

Turn on estimates in the team settings. You can choose between a number of ways to estimate issues. Use a linear scale, exponential scale, Fibonacci scale, or use T-Shirt sizes to describe the complexity of each issue. Regardless of what scale you choose, cycles will automatically compute the overall effort required to complete the cycle and update its graphs accordingly.

Other improvements and fixes

• Added action to set estimates: Shifte
• Added actions to assign the cycle of an issue: Shiftc
• Added an action to assign an issue to the active cycle: ShiftCommandc
• The issue lists will show the estimate and cycle of each issue
• Issues are automatically moved out of the backlog when added to a cycle
• Issues are automatically removed from a cycle if move back to the backlog
• Added toasts when you move issues between active and the backlog so that issues just don't disappear on you

Backlog and Active Issues

Managing a large number of issues can be challenging if you keep them in one place. We added Backlog as the place for new issues and ideas. These are issues that have yet to be prioritized and put on your team's roadmap. Backlog will show up in the sidebar along with other issue categories. By default you'll have one backlog workflow status but you can add more of them in team settings.

When your team is ready to work on issues in Backlog, move them into Active Issues. To make easy to move issues between Backlog and Active Issues, two new shortcuts are available:

• Move to Active Issues: CmdShifta
• Move to Backlog : CmdShiftb

Select All & bulk actions toolbar

We added "Select All" check-boxes for each issue group which will select all issues in the group. You can (de)select individual issues by un-checking or by pressing x shortcut.

After selecting a group of issues, a new bulk action toolbar will appear at the bottom of the screen to make it easier to perform common actions.

Pro tip: Did you know you can also select ranges with Shift + click?

Other improvements and fixes

• Changed "Copy git branch" shortcut into CmdShift. to support Windows
• Fixed archiving issue workflow states
• Fixed opening pull requests in the desktop application
• Improved search for certain actions in the command menu

International keyboard shortcut improvements

Keyboard shortcuts have been improved for non-US keyboard layouts. As part of the improvements, a few shortcuts were remapped to different shortcuts:

• Copy issue ID: Cmd.
• Copy issue git branch: CmdShift.

New version for Linear desktop application

As part of macOS 10.14.5 Apple tightened security requirements for applications. New version of the Linear desktop app has been notarized to match the requirements. If you had issues running the application before, please download the new version here: https://linear.app/download

Improved issue details bar

The UI is simplified and the drop-downs are replaced with the command menu actions.

Other improvements and fixes

• Comment text is now included in desktop notifications
• Rename issues from the command menu
• Ability to copy url to the team. You can find it in the more menu by the team
• Fix to CmdEnter / Escape outside editor
• Fix to back button behavior in issue compose
• Removed showing of duplicate toasts
• Removed empty grouping headers

Grouping headers

The open and closed issue views received UI improvements in the form of grouping headers. While issues have always been sorted primarily based on their workflow status, the new headers make this a lot more clear.

Timezone

In settings, teams can now define which timezone most of their people are working from. This setting doesn't affect much yet but will be important once you can, for example, define what day of the week a sprint should start on.

On that note, don't expect too many updates in the next few weeks as we're working hard behind the scenes to build out support for our next big features: Backlogs, sprints, and projects.

Other improvements and fixes

• Added some missing tooltips to the sidebar
• Issue lists have better performance
• Editing the issue title no longer has cursor problems
• Check-boxes for issues in the list view have a larger click-area
• Fixed exceptions when looking at issues that are over a year old
• Cleaned up the layout of forms in settings
• Updated icon buttons to be more consistent across the application
• Pressing down the command or shift keys after having changed the selection via the keyboard on Safari no longer resets the selection.

New sidebar design

We re-designed the sidebar to be more compact and scalable for upcoming features. It now shows more information and teams are sectioned better. Under each team, you can find their issues grouped into open and closed views. You'll also have the ability to see all issues in a list in addition to the existing board view.

Together with the sidebar, we improved headers for better navigation and issue counts. We also added issue filters to all list views so it's easier to drill down issues based on different parameters.

Copy issue ID and git branch name

To make it faster to copy the issue ID or suggested git branch name, we added icons to the issue view sidebar for them. You'll still be able to get them through the action menu but this change should make copying easier for users who prefer to use a mouse.

Other improvements and fixes

• Unified view components for different lists
• App icon for iOS devices when saved to the home screen
• Improved Slack notifications
• New view for editing issue states

First-time user experience

This week we made major improvements to the sign in and first-time user experience: everyone in your team will now get an introduction to the command menu and other Linear features.

If you are an existing user, you can initiate first-time introduction through the command menu by searching for "welcome tutorial."

Keyboard shortcuts

Redesigned the keyboard shortcuts page with a new design and added all the supported shortcuts. Hit ? to bring up the keyboard shortcuts.

Emoji autocomplete

Typing : in any of the issue descriptions or comments now brings up the emoji autocomplete.

Slack /linear command

In addition to the "More actions" message action, you can now open the new issue dialog with /linear command to file new issues quickly from Slack.

Loading state

While we don't like seeing loading states in the app, having one for the initial load and browser refresh is necessary. We improved design with a subtle logo animation.

Other improvements & fixes

• Updated favicon
• Fixed bugs in GitHub integration and removed source code access from permissions
• Fixed keyboard navigation in Inbox
• Fixed sub-issue actions to focus on the correct sub-issue
• Moved add team functionality to settings page

Creating new issues via email

This week we added the ability to create new issues via email. Perfect for when one of your users emails you a bug report. Simply forward it to your team's email address (you can find the correct email address in your team's settings). The subject of the email becomes the issue's title and the body the description.

Board enhancements

Boards received some love this week, too. You can now easily archive all issues in a board column using the column's drop-down menu. Perfect for when you want to archive all completed issues at the end of the week. Next to the drop-down menu, there's a nifty short-cut to creating new issues for the column.

Jump to an issue via the command menu

You can now use the command menu to jump directly to an issue if you now it's identifier. For example, if you type lin-123, the command menu will search for an issue with that identifier and let you instantly navigate to it.

Other improvements & fixes

• Fixed issues potentially appearing in two board columns at the same time when creating them
• Overly long issue titles now don't break layout anymore
• Synchronization across users of the organization now works more reliably

Linear desktop app

We released our desktop application for macOS this week. It uses the same Javascript/React application we build for the web, but with the Electron wrapper you get nicer notifications, dock badge for unread messages, and most importantly: it's always on. Together with the new application we refreshed our logo (thanks @maxvoltar!) and redesigned the login page.

New settings

Settings views have been combined into one area. This makes navigating personal and team settings easier. GitHub and Slack integration capabilities are also explained in more detail.

Better notifications

We added emails for unread notifications. They are only sent if you were to miss them in the desktop app. We do want to keep your email inbox for more important messages.

Desktop notifications have been redesigned so that titles and descriptions are easier to read. Issues marked as Urgent will also require user interaction as we don't want you to miss them.

Other improvements

• Inbox's "mark all as read" has been re-mapped to ShiftEsc shortcut and it's now also outside the Inbox view.
• New action for adding a comment to an issue was added CmdShiftM
• Internal links have been fixed and they will load significantly faster. You can also paste an issue ID into a description or comment and it's linked automatically.
• Issue actions have been cleaned and un-relevant ones have been removed from the new issue view.

New features

Option to display usernames or real names

Those of us who grew up with IRC, forums and games, we love display and nicknames. To give more control over display and real names in Linear, we added a setting to prefer one or the other. If you use display names, you can still see the other user's real name in their profile by clicking the name.

Improvements

• Improved git branch name generation by changing format and breaking at full words.
• Better error experience for frontend exceptions and ability to reset the client.
• User autocomplete now supports both usernames and display names.
• New welcome email for newly signed up users.
• Fixes related to Safari on iOS. We improved the experience for iPad but are still working on mobile phone support.