Changelog

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 Command/CtrlOptionf 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:

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:

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:

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 Command/CtrlK 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 (Command/CtrlF)
• 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 ShiftL keyboard shortcut.

Other improvements and fixes:

• Issue edits can now be saved using Command/CtrlS
• 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