The palette
Everything the Layers panel does, within reach of the hand already on the mouse.
Hold Ctrl+Alt and roll the wheel anywhere in InDesign. The card opens with the cursor resting on its header, so the wheel and every button are live immediately — no travelling across the screen to a docked panel. It closes as soon as the mouse leaves it, unless you pin it.
Anatomy of a row
Seven things per layer, all of them live.
- EyeBright when the layer is visible, dim when hidden. Click to toggle, Alt+click to isolate.
- PadlockOrange when locked, pale when not. Click to toggle, Alt+click to invert every layer.
- Colour barThe layer colour from InDesign's own Layers panel. Click it to select everything on that layer, Shift+click to add it to the selection.
- NameClick to send the selected objects here. Drag to reorder the layer.
- SwatchClick it to pick a different layer colour from the full InDesign palette.
- CountsHow many objects the layer holds: on the spread you are looking at, then in the whole document, masters included. A layer holding nothing but guides shows how many of them there are, marked with a g —
4g— instead of a nought, and clicking its colour bar selects every guide of that layer on the spread in front of you. The second number only appears when it differs from the first. Counted the way a selection sees the page — a group is one object, a frame with a placed graphic is one, and anchored objects belong to their text frame. Click to select them. They can be switched off in Settings, which also stops the counting and makes the card quicker on a long document. - Selection markerThe small white square at the very end, black in the light theme. It shows on every layer that holds something selected. Click it to select everything on that layer.
The right click menu
Right click any row for the things that belong to that one layer — Rename, Delete layer, Select all objects on this layer — and, when more than one layer is ticked, Merge them. Underneath sit the three tools that work on the whole stack: Sort objects into layers, Layer templates and Visibility sets, so you can reach them without going up to the menu.
Controls
The wheel browses; holding Shift is what actually moves your artwork. Nothing in the document changes until you ask for it.
Opening it
| Input | What happens |
|---|---|
| Ctrl+Alt+Wheel | Opens the card at the cursor. It only opens — nothing in the document moves. |
On the card
| Input | What happens |
|---|---|
| Wheel | Scrolls through the layer stack. The document is untouched; the name in the middle turns blue to say your objects are elsewhere. |
| Shift+Wheel | Moves the selected objects one layer up or down, and the card follows them. |
| Click a name | Sends the selected objects to that layer. With nothing selected it makes that layer active instead, so the next object you draw lands there. |
| Click the colour bar | Selects everything sitting on that layer, on the spread you are looking at. |
| Shift+click the colour bar | Adds those objects to what is already selected, so you can gather objects from several layers. |
| Drag a name | Reorders the layer. Drag to the top or bottom edge and the list scrolls along. |
| Ctrl+click a name | Adds or removes that layer from the selection. |
| Shift+click a name | Selects a whole range of layers. |
| Click the eye or padlock | Toggles it. If that row is part of a multi-selection, the whole selection follows. |
| Alt+click the eye | Isolates the layer — shows only this one. Do it again to bring everything back. |
| Alt+click the padlock | Inverts the locks on every layer. |
| Click the swatch | Opens the InDesign colour palette for that layer. |
| Click the counts | Selects the objects that layer holds on this spread, the same as the colour bar. |
| Click the selection marker | The white square at the end of a row: selects everything on that layer. |
| Right click a row | Rename, delete or select that layer’s objects; merge, when several layers are ticked; and the sort, templates and visibility sets. |
| Alt+click the + | Adds a layer with no questions: the next free name and the first palette colour no layer is wearing. |
| Type in the filter box | Narrows the list to layers whose name contains what you typed. Esc clears it. |
| Drag the header | Moves the card. Drag the bottom edge to make it taller — the height is remembered. |
| Move the mouse away | Closes it, unless the pin is on. |
| Tooltip after two seconds | A bubble says what that control does. |
Locked layers are jumped over InDesign refuses to move objects into a locked layer, so instead of stopping there, scrolling lands on the nearest unlocked layer beyond it. A locked layer never blocks your way — it just cannot be a destination.
States
The card tells you what it is about to do before you commit.
Layer groups
Folders in the layer list, the way Photoshop has them.
InDesign has no layer groups. Its layers are one flat list and no scripting can change that — so Smart Layers keeps its own. Make a group, drop layers into it, collapse it, and a stack of forty layers turns into six lines you can read.
Making one
Menu → New group… makes an empty one. Tick a few layers first and they go straight in. The same command sits on a layer’s right click menu, next to a list of the groups already in the document, so a layer can be filed without leaving the row.
What the header does
- The arrowCollapses and expands. So does clicking anywhere else on the header.
- The eyeShows or hides every layer in the group at once. It is lit only when they are all showing, so a group with one layer hidden reads as switched off.
- The padlockThe same for locks.
- The numberWhat the whole group holds, added up — so a collapsed group still says how much is inside.
- The selection markAppears when any layer in the group carries part of what you have selected.
- Right clickRename the group, or remove it — in one of two ways. Remove group, keep the layers takes only the group away: the layers stay exactly where they are, just loose again, and nothing is deleted. Remove group and delete its layers takes them with it, and everything on them — it asks first and says how many objects would go, the same warning the delete button gives, and it undoes in one step.
Moving things in and out
| Drag | Where it lands |
|---|---|
| onto a group header | Into the group, at the top of it. The header lights up while you hold it there. |
| beside a layer in a group | Into that group, at that spot. |
| beside a loose layer | Out of whatever group it was in. |
| into the strip left of the layers | Beside the group instead of inside it — the way past a group at its top or bottom edge. The insertion line moves out to the full width to say so. |
| below the last row | The very bottom of the stack, outside every group. |
| the header itself | Moves the whole group; its layers travel together and keep their order. |
A group cannot go inside another. InDesign has no nesting to build that on, and one level is what the job needs.
The layers of a group stay together
This is the part worth understanding, because it touches the document rather than the view. A group means something only if its layers sit next to each other in the stack — otherwise collapsing one would hide layers from all over the document. So filing a layer into a group moves it, and the layers of a group are kept as one block.
Layer order decides what covers what, so that is a real change to the document, not a label. It is what you are asking for when you make a group, and it lands as a single undo step together with whatever caused it. Menu → Tidy groups does the same on demand, and says so when there was nothing to do.
The groups travel with the document
They are written inside the .indd itself, not into a
settings file next to the plugin, so they are still there when the job
moves to another machine or another person. Which group a layer belongs
to is written on the layer, so deleting the layer takes the membership
with it, and renaming a layer does not lose it.
Opening the file without Smart Layers changes nothing A colleague without the plugin simply does not see the groups. The layers are all there in the same order, in InDesign’s own flat list, and every InDesign feature works exactly as before — editing, printing, exporting, packaging. The groups are ordinary InDesign script labels, which the application carries around and otherwise ignores. They survive save and reopen and they survive an IDML round trip, both tested rather than assumed.
What can get out of step Someone without the plugin can reorder layers, and a group’s layers can end up scattered. Nothing breaks and nothing is lost, but the panel will draw them together under their header while InDesign really has them apart, so the list stops matching the true stacking. Tidy groups puts it right — and, since it is the stack it is fixing, moves those layers back into one block.
Layer templates
The layer structure you use on every job, rebuilt in one click.
A template is a list of layer names and colours, top to bottom. Apply it to a document and the layers appear in that order, in those colours. Layers that already exist are reused rather than duplicated, so running a template twice is harmless — and on a fresh document the single empty default layer is recycled as the bottom one instead of being left behind.
Build one in the editor, or take a document you have already set up and save its structure with Save current layers as template. Templates are shared by every document.
Example A flyer template of GUIDES, TOP, CONTENT, PRICE, PHOTO and BACKGROUND, each in its own colour, turns the first minute of every new job into one menu click.
Visibility sets
Snapshots of what is shown and what is hidden.
Set the document up the way you want to see it, then save that state under a name. Restoring it later puts every layer back. Sets are matched by layer name, so they keep working after layers are reordered or new ones are added — anything the set does not mention is left alone.
Unlike templates, sets belong to the document they were made in, which is what you want for print-versus-preview or language variants of the same job.
Sorting objects by type
Hand a messy document a structure without touching a single frame by hand.
Two ways round it. Either you say where each kind of object belongs and nothing else happens, or you let it make the layers and work out the order between them by itself. The switch at the top of the dialog picks which.
Let me choose the layers
Nothing is created and nothing moves unless you ask. Anything left on leave where it is is not touched at all, which makes it safe to sort just the photos today and come back for the rest tomorrow.
By object style
Four rules sit above the table: object style → layer. They are
checked first, before anything is judged by its type, because
a style is a decision you made and a type is only an observation. If your price
boxes carry the object style cena, one rule files every one of them
onto CENY, whatever they happen to be made of.
By type
What decides is the file extension of the placed graphic, not
the class InDesign reports. That matters: InDesign calls a placed
.ai a PDF, and a .psd and a .tif plain
images, so going by class alone cannot tell apart the things you tell apart at
a glance.
| Category | What lands in it |
|---|---|
| Text | Text frames |
| Image | jpg png tif psd gif webp bmp |
| Vector | ai eps pdf svg |
| InDesign | indd idml placed as artwork |
| Embedded | A graphic with no link — pasted or embedded, so there is no file name to go by |
| Shape | Rectangles, ovals and polygons with nothing placed in them |
| Line | Graphic lines and open paths |
| Other | Form fields, media, HTML items, legacy types |
Groups
Groups are never broken up. A group moves as one thing, so instead of one Group row there are eight, and a group is filed by what it carries — looked at all the way down, through nested groups as well.
| A group of… | Typically |
|---|---|
| only images | A photo composite |
| only vectors | A logo, an icon set |
| images + vectors | A photo with a logo dropped on it |
| only text | A stacked heading and subheading |
| text + images | A product with its name |
| text + vectors | A price box, a flash |
| text + images + vectors | A whole product block |
| anything else | Nothing but shapes and lines — a rule box, a frame |
Do it for me
Everything else greys out, because there is nothing left for you to set. It
makes the layers it needs — TEXT, VECTORS,
IMAGES, GROUPS, SHAPES,
LINES, OTHER — and only the ones something
actually turned up for. A layer of that name already in the document is reused,
not duplicated.
The interesting part is the order it puts them in. Grouping objects by type must break some overlaps: if a caption sits above photo A and below photo B, and both photos end up on one layer, one of the two has to give. So instead of guessing, it measures the document — for every pair of overlapping objects on a spread it notes which kind was on top — and then tries all 5040 arrangements of the seven layers and keeps the one that breaks the fewest overlaps. Exact, not a guess. Where the measurements tie, it falls back to the order a person would have drawn: text on top, then vectors, images, shapes, and the rest underneath.
Only objects on the same spread can overlap, so the comparison stays inside a spread. On a catalogue the all-pairs version would run for minutes and reach the same answer.
Scope, and objects beside the pages
Selected objects carries a live count, and it keeps looking while the dialog is open — select something in InDesign now and the number follows. Scraps and old versions usually live on the pasteboard, and filing them into production layers helps nobody, so they are left alone unless you tick Also the pasteboard. That tick applies to the whole-document scope: when you select objects yourself, everything you selected is processed, pasteboard or not.
What happens to stacking
The front-to-back order is read before anything moves, and inside every target layer the objects are laid down back to front, so their order relative to each other survives intact. What does change is what follows from the order of the layers themselves: an object sent to a lower layer ends up behind the ones above it. That is the point of sorting, and it is the only thing that shifts.
Objects anchored in text move with their frame, and objects inside a group move with the group. Neither is filed on its own — that would break the layout rather than tidy it.
It says how it went A big job puts a progress bar on screen — small ones are done before a window would be worth opening. While it is reading and measuring, nothing in the document has changed yet, so Esc can call the whole thing off. Automatic mode also reports the order it settled on and how many overlaps it could not save.
It asks before it starts Locked layers and locked objects cannot be moved and would silently be left behind, so the first thing you see is a question: unlock everything first, sort anyway, or cancel. The whole sort — the layers it creates included — is one undo step either way.
Settings
One dialog, everything in view.
- ThemeDark or light. The dialog repaints itself along with the card, so you see the whole thing in the new colours at once.
- Palette size100 % to 200 %. Everything scales together — see Size on big screens.
- RowsHow many layers the card shows, 3 to 25. The same thing as dragging the bottom edge, for when you want an exact number.
- New layersThe word new layers are named after. Type
vrstvaand they becomevrstva 1,vrstva 2… The line underneath spells out what you will get as you type. - Show the object countsThe two numbers on every row. Switching them off does more than hide them: the document is never asked for the counts at all, which is the slowest part of a refresh on a long catalogue.
- Export / ImportTemplates, visibility sets and these settings, in one text file — see Import and export.
- Data folderOpens the folder where all of it lives, next to the script.
The number is the first free one Not a count of the layers. Delete the second of three and you would be offered a name that is still taken, so it looks for the first <name> N the document has not used. Alt+click on the + uses it straight away, together with the first palette colour no layer is wearing.
Themes
Dark by default, light for the people who work that way.
Both live in Menu → Settings, together with the size. Pick one and the card repaints at once — and so does the Settings dialog itself, so you are never left judging a new theme through a window still wearing the old one.
Settings → Theme. The choice is remembered, and the dialogs follow it too, so the whole thing stays one piece.
Size on big screens
A card sized for a laptop turns into a postage stamp on a 4K or 6K screen. Settings → Palette size scales the whole thing to 120, 140, 160, 180 or 200 percent — text, icons, swatches and spacing together, so it stays proportional. It takes effect the moment you pick it, so you can see what you are choosing, and it is remembered like the theme.
Licence and the trial
Smart Layers is unlocked by a licence key. The trial is a key as well — free, and good for fourteen days — so it goes into the same box a purchased one does, and with it in, the plugin does everything.
The days are counted from the moment you got the trial, not from the moment you typed the key in. Reinstalling, a new computer or clearing the plugin's data therefore adds no days — and takes none away either: put the same key in again and you carry on where you left off.
One key covers both the palette and the InDesign panel, so you buy once. The same key goes into your other computers as well — the number of installations is not policed.
Where the key goes
Menu → Licence… in the palette, and the same item in the panel's three-line menu. With no key the palette's card does not open at all and the shortcut brings up the licence window instead; Licence and Settings are also in the menu on the palette's tray icon.
The window has two buttons: Get a free 14-day trial and Buy the full version. Both open a page in your browser and the key arrives at once — in the receipt and on your purchase page at Gumroad. Paste the whole line, dashes and all, and press Activate.
The internet is needed only for a moment
The key is checked with Gumroad, so you have to be online to activate. A purchased licence then works for 30 days with no internet and quietly checks itself about once a day. A trial needs no internet at all once it has been checked — when it ends is settled by the date of the sale. A network that is not there never cancels a running trial or licence.
What works without a key
Settings, this manual and the licence window. The document work is shut until a key goes in — but nothing of yours suffers for it: templates, visibility sets and the layer groups in your documents all stay where they are and come back the moment you activate.
If a key is not accepted Check that the whole of it was pasted. If it says the key is not for this product, it is most likely another tool's key — each one has its own. If it says Gumroad could not be reached, that is the network or a company filtering it: the key stays saved and is confirmed by itself as soon as you are online.
Installing
One folder, one thing to run.
Windows
Keep every file of the package together in one folder and run
Smart_layers.exe — an icon appears in the tray. Nothing is
installed and nothing else is needed. Put a shortcut to it in your Startup
folder if you want it there every morning.
Open InDesign, select something, hold Ctrl+Alt and roll the wheel once. Run only one copy at a time — two of them would fight over the same shortcut.
macOS
The palette is Windows only; on macOS InDesign itself stands in for it.
Copy the folder into the Scripts Panel folder, then assign shortcuts in
Edit → Keyboard Shortcuts with the Product Area set to Scripts, to
Layer UP.jsx and Layer DOWN.jsx.
You get moving, clicking and the lock markers. Wheel browsing, dragging, the filter and the menu are Windows only — they belong to the overlay, not the document side.
Data & settings
What the palette remembers, and where it keeps it.
Everything the palette remembers sits in one folder beside it, in plain text files. Settings → Data folder opens it.
- Layer templates
- One file each: layer names and their colours, top to bottom. Shared by every document.
- Visibility sets
- Saved show/hide states, kept per document.
- Preferences
- Theme, palette size, rows, what new layers are called, the object counts — and the last choices made in the sort dialog.
Import and export
Settings → Export writes your templates, sets and preferences into a single text file; import reads it back and tells you what it found before it does anything. That is the way to move a setup to another machine, or to hand your layer structure to a colleague.
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Fix |
|---|---|
| Nothing opens | The tray icon has to be running and InDesign has to be the active window, with a document open. |
| “InDesign is not responding (COM)” | With several versions installed, set indesignProgId in the config to yours, for example InDesign.Application.2026. |
| Icons show as empty boxes | Your Windows is missing the icon font. Switch iconFont to Segoe UI Emoji and use the emoji glyphs noted beside it. |
| The card closes too easily | Raise mouseTolerance, or turn the pin on while you work. |
| Shift + wheel does nothing | Every layer in that direction is locked, so there is nowhere to go. |
Everything else worth changing — sizes, colours, fonts, timings, which gestures are on — sits in the configuration block at the top of the script, in plain English with a comment on each line.