How to make Sketch show paths which have no fill or border?

Question

I am learning Sketch v49.

As a simple example, I have one layer with one path, the path is without a fill or a border.

When I mouse over the path in the layer list, Sketch highlights the path blue.

When I select the path in the layer list, Sketch displays the bounding box around the path, but no longer highlights it blue, so I cannot see it.

When nothing is selected, I cannot see the path at all, and the page appears invisible.

How can I set Sketch to show me the path without changing the properties or style of the path itself? Basically, I want (something like) the blue outline shown all the time.

Of course, my actual project is many paths, some are complex combined shapes. All have no fill or border, so everything is "invisible". To see all the paths at the same time, I must edit every path and add a border.

This seems like I must be missing something obvious.

Answer 1

That is just how Sketch works.

Unlike Illustrator, where you can just preview the Outlines using CMD+Y, there's no such thing for Sketch (up to today). The only cues for such objects are the outline in the layers list, the blue outline of the path when you hover the layer name in the list, and the bounding box when you select it. And if it's a mask layer you still have an additional hint of the shape by looking at the layer being masked.

One way you can see invisible mask layers is to hover them on the artboard with the CMD key pressed, the path will light up in blue. Normal hovering doesn't light them up.

Another tactic you can try is to create a Layer Style and apply it to all your invisible objects. Whenever you want to see them just select one of the objects, add a border and update the style: all your invisible objects will have a border.

Where else would you use a completely invisible layer anyway? You can just hide the ones you're not using with CMD+SHIFT+H.