Changelog

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

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: Command/CtrlShifta
• Move to Backlog : Command/CtrlShiftb

Select All & bulk actions toolbar⁠

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

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

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

Other improvements and fixes⁠

• Changed "Copy git branch" shortcut into Command/CtrlShift. 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: Command/Ctrl.
• Copy issue git branch: Command/CtrlShift.

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 Command/CtrlEnter / 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