Changelog

Copy team settings

Teams in Linear can define their workflow, labels and other settings, including the schedule of any cycles they might have been using. Many times, new teams would just want to copy over the workflow and labels from an existing team rather than fill them out themselves.

We added a new option to the team creation view to let you copy over all settings from an existing team.

Other improvements and fixes:

• The next upcoming cycle is now shown in the sidebar
• Emoji only comments
• You can press ⇧ and j/k to paint select a number of issues in issue lists
• You can now press and hold j/k to navigate the issue lists up and down
• You can now rename templates via the action menu
• Added a new preference to assign an issue to yourself if you copy its git branch name and the issue is unassigned
• Keyboard shortcuts are now correctly capitalized throughout the application
• Several fixes to board ordering and rendering
• There's a new action to mark all notifications as read

Happy new year from the Linear team!

Issue templates

If you have a certain structure of issues that you use frequently or have some information you'd always like to be filled out by people creating issues, you can now use templates to make your workflow a whole lot faster.

Templates can be created by anyone in the team and are scoped to that team. You can review the current templates, create new ones or edit existing ones in the new Templates section of Team settings.

In addition to prefilling your issue title or body, you can also set the labels and priority of issue templates.

Other improvements and fixes:

• Optimized performance of board view
• Added ability to filter by estimate points
• Fixed ordering when dragging issues in a board when using filters
• Better scrollbar support for improved usability
• Wrapping long links in issue editor
• Improved team assigning for new invited users

New command menu

The command menu is one of the core components of Linear and lets you execute any command with just a few keystrokes. We already have hundreds of actions that range from modifying issue properties to switching between UI themes. With the number of commands set to increase with new functionality, we wanted to revisit how commands are grouped, ordered and displayed.

The new command menu groups its commands based on their functionality. Groups are prioritized based on what you are focusing on, or the view you're currently in. For example, if you are looking at cycles, the command menu will first display commands that are related to cycles. Groups are then further subdivided based on the type of command, making it easier to skim over large sets. Icons further help find what you're looking for.

Support for retina screenshots

Linear now supports correct dimensions for 2x retina resolution screenshots in PNG format. Correct image dimensions are set when the file is uploaded through the editor.

Why didn't we support this before, one might ask? Even modern browsers don't expose the real dimension information and therefore render the image like it would have been zoomed in 200%. To determine the correct information, we have to read the header information from the raw PNG data and use pHYs header (physical pixel dimensions) to determine if the image's real resolution.

Other improvements and fixes:

• Cycles now display weekdays left until completion instead of days left
• Added filters for open and closed issues
• Improved styling of code-blocks in the editor
• Links can now be opened in the link editor when editing an issue
• Figma embeds work more reliably
• Label and project pages now include backlog issues
• Label pages for labels that contain slashes now work correctly
• The desktop app now uses the browser for authentication to improve reliability
• Deleting notifications now result in a more accurate toast message

Onboarding: Join Teams

Often as companies grow, new Linear teams are created to help organize issues better. However, not everyone needs to be an active member of all the teams in a company.

To improve the onboarding experience for new team members joining the workspace, we added a dialog that lets new users only join the teams they want, or create a new team. Teams can always be joined, left or edited afterward as well.

Editor improvements: New formatting toolbar and easier linking

We redesigned the editor formatting toolbar with new styling and icons. The toolbar now includes actions to create links and format text as inline code. For users who prefer not to touch their mouse, Markdown shortcuts are of course still available, as are keyboard shortcuts.

ProTip: Quickly create a link by selecting text and pasting a link on it.

Other improvements and fixes:

• Added hiring page at linear.app/readme
• Use Linear avatars if there is no avatar on a user's Google profile
• Images now have a maximum height in the editor
• Fixed bug related to invites sent to Gmail users
• Backlog issues are shown before completed/closed issues in views
• Elevation added to more UI elements
• Issue details now show avatar names according to user preferences
• Airtable links now convert to document embeds

GitHub workflow

GitHub workflow is one of the most powerful features in Linear. As a developer, it enables you to track the status of your work automatically as you work on your branches. Being an important part of the experience, we added the GitHub setup to the onboarding.

After GitHub has been connected, new users joining the workspace will get tips on how to efficiently use the GitHub integration in their workflow.

Other improvements and fixes:

• Re-mapped the save filters keyboard shortcut to ⌘⌥f to avoid conflicting with the remove all filters command
• Fixed an issue which caused some pages (e.g. issues for a label) not updating in realtime
• Issue created notifications that originated from Slack will no longer be sent back to Slack
• The assignees' list now only shows active users
• @mention listings now only show active users
• The issue subscription dialog now only shows active users
• The editor will now only convert dashes and stars to horizontal rules when entered at the beginning of a line
• Fixed the nullability of the user avatar in the GraphQL API

API improvements

Linear is built on our GraphQL API which is also available to our users through personal API keys. As we have evolved the application, the API has evolved as well. This week we're releasing larger breaking changes to future proof the API and provide more stable building blocks for the future.

Pagination

All list responses from queries now return paginated results instead of a list. We implement Relay style cursor-based pagination model with first/after and last/before pagination arguments. To simply query get first 10 issues for your organization:

query {
  issues(first: 10) {
    edges {
      node {
        id
        title
      }
      cursor
    }
    pageInfo {
      hasNextPage
      endCursor
    }
  }
}

The first 50 results are returned by default without query arguments. Pagination also supports simpler syntax where instead of edges you can directly get all the nodes similar to GitHub's GraphQL API:

query {
  teams {
    nodes {
      id
      name
    }
  }
}

Archived resources

Archived resources are now hidden by default from the paginated responses. They can be included by passing optional includeArchived: true as a query parameter.

New viewer query

To get the currently logged in user, we also added a simpler viewer query:

query {
  viewer {
    id
    name
    email
  }
}

Other improvements and fixes:

• Fixed a bug in team archiving which lead to client crashes in certain situations

Secured a USD 4.2M Seed Round

We are creating software for startups and companies who look to create impact. We believe creators should be able to focus on work, not managing their work, and managers should be able to focus on creating alignment and direction, and not micro-managing timelines and tasks. Any process shouldn’t come in the way of creating.

To build this vision, we’ve raised a USD 4.2M seed round, led by Sequoia Capital with participation from Index Ventures and others. Read more about this investment in our Medium post.

Other improvements and fixes:

• YouTube video's can now be embedded in issue details and comments. Just paste a YouTube link into the editor to embed.
• Headers now display issue estimates instead of issue counts
• Repo names are now visible in GitHub pull requests in the issue detail view
• Fixes an issue that let the user save an issue and comment before file uploads were completed
• Labels now have a larger hit-area for the delete action
• Pinch-to-zoom is now disabled for mobile devices
• Auth windows now open as neat pop-ups instead of full-screen web pages
• Fixed colors for links in the People settings page
• Fixes misalignments in the People settings page
• New website to explain some of the functionality of Linear

New sidebar

We've redesigned the sidebar to accommodate larger organizations and improve speed and usability. Users can now leave and join teams from the drop-down menu of each team. Leaving a team will move the team to an "All teams" section of the sidebar, enabling you to focus on the teams that you actively work with. Issues can still be assigned to users that are not part of the team, but the user interface will highlight which users are not part of the team that the issue belongs to.

Individual sections and teams in the sidebar can be collapsed and Linear will remember which sections the user collapsed to persist this information across sessions.

Other improvements and fixes:

• Linear access is now revoked if the access to the associated Google account is suspended
• List views now correctly account for varying issue ID widths
• A newly created sub-issue will now copy the cycle property of its parent
• The issue title now as correct margins and will resize itself to multiple rows when the window is resized
• Added new command menu action to copy issue description in markdown format
• The user page layout has been improved
• Fixed issues with command menu animation issues with the latest Chrome
• Fixed recognizing Enter in issue and comment editor for certain input strings
• Integration authentication dialogs have been moved into popup windows
• Disabled pinch-to-zoom on mobile devices
• Push notifications are no longer sent to suspended users
• Moving up/down a list with k and j now also works when Ctrl is pressed

Better Slack notifications

Consuming the full firehose of Linear updates in a Slack channel can get overwhelming at times. Each team can now choose which Linear updates to send to their Slack channel. You can receive notifications of newly created issues, new comments on existing issues and all updates to existing issues. Head over to your team settings to make adjustments.

Refer a friend

Have a friend who would like to use Linear? You can now refer them and they will skip the invite waitlist.

To refer a friend, search for "Refer to Linear" in the command menu or select the option from the main options menu. We'll ask your friend to fill out our beta survey to make sure Linear is ready for them. Once the survey has been submitted, we'll be in touch within a few days.

Mobile improvements

Pressing ⌘K to bring up the command menu isn't very mobile-friendly. To bring the command menu to the reach of mobile users, we added a two-finger tap gesture that brings up the command menu on touch-screen devices.

Linear is now also a progressive web app. You can install it to your home screen for quick access using the browser on your mobile phone or tablet. When browsing Linear, hit Options > Add to home screen.

Furthermore, we went through every screen in the application and improved the way we render each of them on mobile devices with limited screen real-estate.

Improved dark mode

We've improved the visual appearance of pop-overs, tooltips and buttons with the introduction of an elevation system. This increases the contrast between elevated components in dark mode.

Other improvements and fixes:

• Settings can now be closed using Esc
• Fixed some email validation issues in the invite users from
• Keyboard shortcuts are now more easily browsable on small screens
• Fixed client crashes when deleting an existing team
• Fixed upcoming cycles not correctly being created when a team has previously archived cycles
• Fixed keyboard shortcuts incorrectly capturing key input when trying to enter text on some input fields
• Fixed code-blocks in editor when using Firefox
• Disabled spellchecking in code-blocks
• Fixed a daylight saving time issue when rendering weekends on in the cycle burn-up graph
• Weekends are now correctly rendered in the cycle burn-up graph for users in different timezones than the team

Responsive web application

Linear's web application is now responsive and scales for both tablets and smartphone screens. While most developers use Linear on their desktop, it's common to add new issues in a meeting or quickly reply to a comment on the go. We didn't want to dumb down the experience for mobile users and instead decided to make the whole application adapt to all screen sizes. This is an ongoing process and we'll improve the experience over time.

Invite external users

External Gmail users can now be invited to join Linear teams. This should help onboard contractors and partners in situations where they don't have access to your GSuite. Right now external users get access to all your workspace data with the limitation of not being able to invite other users. We'll expand access level control over time. If your team has more specific needs, please send us feedback.

Label pages

Pages are now available for each label, grouping issues tagged with the label. Clicking a label in the issue list or detail views opens the label page. You can add it to your sidebar for quick access through favorites. There's also a new shortcut for quickly jumping into a label page (O then L).

Other improvements and fixes:

• Added option to change between light and dark theme based on your OS system preference
• Improved application cold startup time significantly for larger teams
• Added option to subscribe to changelog updates in the new user onboarding
• Added text filtering for views (⌘F)
• Added ability to subscribe to your cycle schedule thought a calendar feed (available in command menu when viewing cycles).
• Added developer action to copy model UUIDs from the command menu
• Cycle schedules can now be added to the calendar.
• Fixed bug where modals closed for text selection
• Fixed keyboard shortcuts when interacting with input fields
• Fixed real-time updates for comment edits

Zapier integration

We've created a Zapier app that lets you create automation that publish issues to Linear.

Want to create a new issue when a tag has been added to an Intercom conversation? Or create a bug report when you receive an email message with specific keywords? Or create an issue whenever a custom database query returns a new row? Now you can.

The Zapier app hasn't launched publicly yet, but you can join our beta today.

We're developing the integration as an open source project and it's available on GitHub. Feel free to submit pull requests if there's something you'd like to add to it.

Label improvements

You can now filter for issues that don't have any labels. In the filter menu select Filter by label > No label. This filter can be mixed and matched with other label filters, so you can now filter for issues that either a specific label or no labels at all. Labels can now be removed using the ⇧L keyboard shortcut.

Other improvements and fixes:

• Issue edits can now be saved using ⌘S
• Copying a git branch name will now result in a lower-cased team key
• Improves cold startup performance
• Improves layout of lists with long issue identifiers
• When an issue is completed during an active cycle, it is added to the cycle
• Co-workers can now be invited from a link in the sidebar
• Sub-issues are now automatically added to the same project as the parent issue upon creation
• Fixes loading of filters that target unassigned issues
• Fixes to entering text in the command menu when the cursor isn't at the end of the input field
• Fixes comment editing on Safari
• Fixes filtering UI when filtering against multiple projects
• Updated welcome tutorial to render better on mobile devices
• Fixes search focus when selecting the search command from the command menu

Improved comments

Comments are now editable by the submitter. Once edited, an indicator will note that edits were made. Todo-lists inside comments have also received the ability to be ticked off after the comment has been submitted.

The timestamps on comments and other issue history entries are now links, so you'll be able to share a direct link to a specific comment.

Invite your team

Inviting your team is now easier with dedicated invite links. To grab your personal share link, head to People tab under settings. As always, you'll also be able to invite your team via email.

Link to issues in GitHub

While not a new feature of Linear, we thought it would be worth mentioning that GitHub has added the ability to auto-link issue ID's with external issue trackers. This works well together with Linear, and you'll be able to set it up under repository settings for each team. Just map your team key (e.g. KEY-) to the Linear URL (https://linear.app/issue/KEY-<num>). Don't forget to replace the team key with yours.

Other improvements and fixes:

• Multiple GitHub pull requests are now combined into a single indicator on lists and boards which makes it easier to open the correct PR through the command menu
• Clearing search input doesn't open the search page anymore
• Search results can now be filtered by team
• Selecting issue filters in the issue detail pane now includes the ability to create and assign a new label if one isn't found
• Archiving issues from a board lane now respect any active filters you might have going on
• Several fixes to keyboard navigation under projects
• Opening an issue will now mark all notifications for that issue as read
• Action to clear Inbox has been renamed as "clear all notifications"
• Board views now include full issue titles
• Team and label names are now unique
• The cycle menu now uses the command menu and includes an action to favorite the cycle
• The feedback form now caches the message locally so that you don't lose text upon accidental close
• Typed in arrows in descriptions and comments now get converted into Unicode characters
• Improvements to the data synchronization protocol
• Fix to fetching Figma previews under certain conditions
• Fixes ordering of issues in the board view
• Fixes ordering of workflow statuses

Contextual command menu

The command menu gives you access to all actions applicable to your view or selection. We also bring up the command menu when you're clicking on items in the UI that have a corresponding action command menu, such as assigning an issue to a user or setting an issue's priority. While this worked reasonably well, we didn't like that the fact that the command menu always appeared at the center of the screen, regardless of whether it was invoked using the keyboard or mouse.

This week, we're bringing the command menu closer to the UI element that it was invoked from. The command menu now acts almost like a drop-down element but still retains its searchability and keyboard controllability.

Improved desktop application

Linear's desktop application wraps the web application for macOS and ships with native notifications among other functionality. This week we shipped several improvements listed below. If you already have the app installed, it will prompt you to update, or you can download it manually here.

• Upgraded to Electron 6 with latest Chromium
• Application will now ask to move itself to the Application folder if it detects that it is launched from Downloads or other location
• Added right click context menu for copying and opening links
• Added ability to zoom and other window controls
• Fixed "Hide Others" options for macOS
• Remapped back/forward shortcuts to macOS native ⌘[/⌘]
• Added preferences shortcut: ⌘,
• Added home view shortcut: ⇧⌘h
• Fixed canceling edit mode prompt
• Fixed dragging window from issue view header
• Fixed Figma preview links in certain cases

Other improvements and fixes:

• Notifications are now sent for users that are added as subscribers to an issue
• Slack notifications include better links for Figma previews
• Many small UI elements have been given more hit area so that they are easier to click
• Many UI elements now have better highlight states
• Suspended users will receive better error messages when they try to modify resources
• Peek is now deactivated when the command menu is opened
• Board elements now show estimates

Figma integration

We love Figma, and use it to design Linear. To make it easier to share design mocks in Linear, we now have an integration which converts Figma links into design previews inside Linear. Just copy a link to specific artboard, or a file, and we'll generate a preview image and a link in few seconds.

On technical implementation, we build this integration from ground up on Figma's API with their OAuth2 authentication. Instead just using Figma's standard Embed, this gives us several advantages:

• Performance - Figma's Embeds are heavy to load and they had significant performance impact to our frontend rendering. Loading an image with a link is as fast as loading any other image.
• Support for private Figma files - Figma Embeds only work with public files. Loading screenshots via their API allows us to embed any file.
• Snapshot in time - When you share a mock as a comment, it's not ideal that the mock changes over time. _ Select what to show - You can select a specific artboard to be rendered as the preview image. Useful when you want to use the main design element or cover page as the preview.
• Embed on demand - You can click the preview image to open Figma's Embed in its full glory if you want to dive into the asset without opening full Figma.

One-click cycle planning

It's common to go through all team members in cycle planning or retro. Instead of applying user filter after user filter, we made this one-click action: hover over the user in cycle sidepanel and select "Filter". This combined with issue peek and you'll be done with your meeting in no time.

New shortcut commands and keys

We added new shortcut commands for quick opening views:

• o then c - Open cycle…
• o then p - Open project…
• o then f - Open favorite…
• o then u - Open user…

All these commands are also available in the command menu (⌘k). You can also trigger them from the header by clicking the title of the current view (e.g. cycle name in cycle view).

In addition to open commands we added keyboard shortcuts to all the available sidebar links:

• g then x - Open closed issues
• g then e - Open all issues
• g then b - Open issue board
• g then v - Open active cycle

Other improvements and fixes:

• Sub-issues in issue now fit more relevant information (removed ID and creation date)
• Better link color for issue descriptions in dark mode
• Improved shadow styling for cycle sidebar
• Issue estimate is now included in issue peek view
• Empty columns are now hidden in board view when filtering against status
• Added confirm step for moving issues between teams
• Sidebar favorites are now ordered by the time of favoriting
• Search now includes issue descriptions
• Fixed missing color from project edit modal
• Fixed closing of keyboard help modal with Esc
• Fixes to comment compose
• Fixed exception when filtering cycles
• Fixed bugs in favoriting which lead to app crashing
• Fixed scheduled cycle closing

Improved peek

Peek is one the semi-secrets of the Linear UI. It’s a quick way to glance over the focused issue in issue lists similar to Quicklook in macOS. It can be useful in cases where you are trying prioritize several issues in a list, find one particular issue, or decide what to do with an issue.

It's a great feature, so it deserves a more prominent key to invoke it. We've remapped the key from Alt to Space. Peek is active while you hold down Space, or you can quickly press Space once to toggle it on, and once more to toggle it off.

File uploads

Linear already supported photo and video uploads, and now we added generic support for all files type. You can add any file to the issue description or a comment as attachments. To attach a file, simply drag and drop files from your computer to the description editor or comment box.

Add more favorites

In addition to projects, you can now favorite individual issues or cycles and have them appear in the sidebar for quick access.

Other improvements and fixes:

• The associated projects in issue lists now link to the project
• Improved hover states for many components
• Prevents background auto-update when you're in the middle of editing an issue
• Fixed an exception in billings page when you have an active subscription
• Fixed subscribers button with several subscribers
• Issue title now renders in correct color in Safari
• Further search improvements for better matching

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 ⌘⇧f
• 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 (⌘k). 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 Ctrl⇧7.

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
• ⇧Enter 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 (⇧s) and unsubscribing (⌘⇧s) 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 ⇧
• Hold ⇧ and press Arrow Up/Arrow Down to expand selection
• Hold ⇧ 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 (⇧p)
• 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 ⌘b 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 (⌘⇧.) when starting work on an issue, toggle on this small automation

Other improvements and fixes

• Added new action: Duplicate as new issue… ⌘⇧c
• 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 ⇧f 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 (⌘i) 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, ⌘Enter 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 ⌘k

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: ⇧e
• Added actions to assign the cycle of an issue: ⇧c
• Added an action to assign an issue to the active cycle: ⇧⌘c
• 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: ⌘⇧a
• Move to Backlog : ⌘⇧b

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 ⇧ + click?

Other improvements and fixes

• Changed "Copy git branch" shortcut into ⌘⇧. 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: ⌘.
• Copy issue git branch: ⌘⇧.

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 ⌘Enter / 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 ⇧Esc shortcut and it's now also outside the Inbox view.
• New action for adding a comment to an issue was added ⌘⇧M
• 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.