Changelog

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 (Command/Ctrlk). 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 (Command/CtrlShifts) 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 Command/Ctrlb 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 (Command/CtrlShift.) when starting work on an issue, toggle on this small automation

Other improvements and fixes

• Added new action: Duplicate as new issue…Command/CtrlShiftc
• 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 (Command/Ctrli) 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, Command/CtrlEnter 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 Command/Ctrlk

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: ShiftCommand/Ctrlc
• 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