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Question

Duplicating Libraries

  • April 3, 2024
  • 3 replies
  • 1071 views

Hello, Figma Community!

I’m exploring the process of duplicating an existing library within my team and have several questions about how this impacts both the original and the duplicated libraries. I appreciate any insights or experiences you can share!

  1. Notifications to Team: When I duplicate a library, does the team receive any notification about this new duplicate?
  2. Connection Between Original and Duplicated Libraries: After publishing the duplicated library, is there any link or connection back to the original library? In other words, does the duplication process create any dependencies or ties between the two?
  3. Impact on the Original Library: By duplicating a library, is there any risk of altering or damaging the original library in any way?
  4. Preservation of Library Elements: Does duplicating a library ensure that all variants, functions, and components from the original library are carried over? More importantly, will these elements function as intended in the duplicated library?
  5. Updates and Independence: If I update either the original library or the duplicated one, will these updates affect the other library? My understanding is that they should remain independent, but I would like confirmation.

Your feedback and guidance on these points would be greatly appreciated, as I want to ensure a smooth workflow for my team and maintain the integrity of our design systems.

Thank you in advance for your help!

3 replies

y_toku
Figmate
  • Community Support
  • 2217 replies
  • April 5, 2024

Thanks for your post! The process of duplicating libraries can be complex, particularly depending on the structure of your components. It’s challenging to provide a direct answer, as outcomes can vary based on factors such as layer structure. I recommend starting by testing with smaller sections to understand how the process works, and then gradually apply these changes to the rest of your work.

In terms of notifications, others should not receive any unless you publish the changes. Additionally, if you have instances within the same file in the library, no notifications should be sent out.

When duplicating libraries and moving the original components, I suggest checking out these articles for more information:

Figma Learn - Help Center

I also hope that these might help clarify some of your concerns and other community members can share the tips for this topic too!

Thanks,
Toku


akay
  • 1 reply
  • June 18, 2024

Hi Toku, are there any resources that do get into duplicating a library around the complexities you mentioned? I think I follow the articles you posted, but I don’t have the expertise to just apply them to my use case.

For context, I’m trying to duplicate a design system in order to test updates to the system on selected screens. I don’t necessarily need the entire system for the selected screens I’m looking at, but if the test goes well, then we will need to migrate all of our active pages to the new system, so I want to ensure that all components are present from the get-go.

Once I found the Swap Library option, the workflow I expected was:

  1. Duplicate the library
  2. Swap the library with the dupe on the screens I’m working on
  3. Make updates to the duped library

y_toku
Figmate
  • Community Support
  • 2217 replies
  • June 25, 2024

Thanks for reaching out!

It doesn’t mention about the complexity but this YouTube tutorial explains how to move main from one file to another without breaking links to instances:

It’s a bit old but the content is still useful!

I hope this helps.

Thanks,
Toku


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