Hi everyone,
First, I want to say that the SF Symbols export in Glyph is excellent. It is extremely useful for designing custom symbols for Apple devices, and it makes the overall workflow much easier.
However, I have encountered a visualization and workflow issue involving masks.
While drawing a symbol in Glyph, using a mask on certain paths can be very helpful—and sometimes necessary—to preview the symbol correctly. The mask lets you see something close to the intended final appearance while you continue editing the individual elements.
[Screenshot 1 — Symbol in Glyph with the mask enabled]
The issue appears during the SF Symbols export. If a path uses Glyph’s mask feature, the export seems to apply the mask destructively: the masked geometry is flattened, and parts of the original path are removed.
[Screenshot 2 — Exported result showing the flattened or trimmed path]
This produces the right static appearance, but it no longer contains the complete paths and layer structure used to construct the symbol.
If I avoid using the mask and leave every path unchanged, the preview inside Glyph becomes more difficult to understand because overlapping or hidden geometry remains visible.
[Screenshot 3 — Symbol in Glyph without the mask, showing the difficult preview]
However, exporting this unmasked version preserves every path correctly. I can then set the layer order in the SF Symbols app and achieve the intended visual result there.
[Screenshot 4 — Preserved paths arranged correctly in the SF Symbols app]
Preserving these complete paths is important because the layers may need to remain independent inside the SF Symbols app. This is especially useful—or even mandatory—when an individual element needs its own animation. Keeping the full geometry and layer structure makes it possible to create more refined animated symbols for iOS icons and interfaces.
Would it be possible to add an option to the SF Symbols export dialog, such as:
- Preserve masked paths
- Export original paths without applying masks
- Preserve layer geometry
With this option enabled, masks would continue to provide an accurate preview inside Glyph, but the exporter would keep the original paths instead of flattening or trimming them. The visual masking and layer ordering could then be recreated in the SF Symbols app.
The current flattened export could remain the default, since it is useful when the final appearance is all that matters. An additional preservation option would make the workflow much more flexible for layered and animated symbols.
Thank you for considering it—and again, the SF Symbols export is already a very valuable feature.