I’m not sure if I’m explaining myself clearly, but I often find myself aligning a layer to the edge of the frame when what I really want is to create a specific gap of X pixels from the nearest object.

Let me give you an example: Imagine I’m designing an app, and this app has a header. If I want to align a title on a particular screen of that app to the top and then create a gap (let’s say 24px down) to establish the appropriate padding from the navbar, the title ends up aligning with the edge of the frame (either behind or above the navbar). However, what would be more useful for me is if it aligned with the navbar itself and then allowed me to easily move it 24px from there, possibly with three quick nudges of 8px each.

It might seem like a small thing, but I believe it’s a more common issue than it appears. It can be quite tedious to manually place objects in perfect alignment and then set the desired padding. Alternatively, placing objects close to that example header and gradually moving them closer while adjusting the 24px gap can be time-consuming.

The beauty of this proposed shortcut or functionality is that it wouldn’t replace any existing feature but would add an extra layer of functionality with the simple press of a keyboard key (I think Option/Alt would be ideal).