Changelog

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

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 Command/Ctrl[/Command/Ctrl]
• Added preferences shortcut: Command/Ctrl,
• Added home view shortcut: ShiftCommand/Ctrlh
• 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 (Command/Ctrlk). 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