Sketch predates both Figma and Framer, and a lot of older design systems still live in .sketch files. If you're trying to move one of those into Framer, there's no direct import — the realistic path goes through Figma first.
Why there's no direct Sketch → Framer path
Framer's import tooling is built around Figma files specifically (see our full Figma → Framer → Next.js pipeline breakdown for how that side works) — there's no equivalent first-party Sketch importer. Sketch is also Mac-only, which narrows both its remaining user base and the incentive for platforms to build native Sketch support going forward.
The actual two-step path
- Sketch → Figma. Figma has a built-in Sketch file importer (File → Import, or drag-and-drop a
.sketchfile directly into a Figma project) that converts layers, styles, and components reasonably faithfully — text, shapes, and basic auto-layout-adjacent structure usually come through cleanly. What often needs manual cleanup afterward: Sketch's older Symbol/Override system doesn't map perfectly onto Figma's Components/Variants, and any Sketch plugin-generated content (certain icon libraries, some data plugins) won't have an equivalent in the imported file. - Figma → Framer. Once the design lives in Figma, Framer's Figma import (or its "paste from Figma" workflow, depending on how much of the file you're bringing over) picks it up from there, the same way any Figma-native design would move into Framer.
What to check after each step
The failure mode with a two-step conversion like this isn't usually catastrophic breakage — it's small drift that's easy to miss: a font that Sketch had locally but Figma doesn't recognize, spacing that was slightly off in auto-layout conversion, or a component variant that split into a copy instead of staying linked. Budget time to compare the final Framer result against the original Sketch file side-by-side rather than assuming a clean pass-through.
If the goal was ownership, not just migration
If moving off Sketch is part of a broader move away from design-tool lock-in generally — wanting the final site as real, hostable code rather than a file that only opens in one app — that's exactly what converting the finished Framer site into HTML or a Next.js project gets you, once the design work above is done. See how that conversion works.