Edit Access Issue with Figma Dev Mode for Professional Plan

+1 one on this.

Agreed! Dev Mode needs to be read only.

At a minimum it needs to have the option to make it read only.

Figma - CAN YOU PLEASE give the ability to disable Edit access for Developers using Dev Mode on the Professional Pricing Tier - This is causing major problems with erroneous changes to design files. My team is seriously looking at alternatives like PenPot.

+1 +1 +1 +1 this is very problematic for our team as well

This should already be an option, I am quite shocked Figma would ship a feature organizations have to give edit access to all the devs to able them to continue to work

We have the same issue. Developers are accidentally changing files they actually only want to see in Dev mode and we have to run after them to fix the issues.

At the same time devs are actually asking us proactively “can you keep dev mode for me but still but me on read only” and we can’t do it so now we’re facing the choice which team has more work.

The devs because they won’t be able to see dev mode or pms and designers because they have to fix accidental fuckups the devs don’t even notice doing.

Very odd choice to couple editing rights with access rights to a product feature. I understand from a pricing perspective (also debatable but ok I at least get the idea of “you need to upgrade to get dev mode” – fine) but the license type bought for a user shouldn’t directly relate to the user rights!

+1+1+1+1 on this issue

I’ve reviewed the help article and the available settings again. It seems to me, that we need does exist, but isn’t fully implemented in the Admin panel by Figma.

• Users with full Design seats can continue using Dev Mode without interruption.

I.e. Full Users with Edit rights get Dev Mode also

• People with a viewer-restricted seat can request a Dev Mode seat. While they wait for admin approval, they can use Dev Mode for up to 14 days.

Sounds to me like “Dev Mode Standalone” is just not an available option there directly, but if users are set to “view-restricted” then they can request an upgrade, and if that’s approved then they basically get Dev Mode w/o edit rights. I will try this on a call tomorrow morning and revert back here.

(list filtered to my own name only for privacy reasons)

Whatever the outcome of my test, it would definitely be much much easier if these dropdowns and filters are adjusted and a “Dev Mode” seat is separate from Editing rights either by adding an option to the “Design Seat” column or by adding another column (similar to FigJam)

I have found the solution, even though it’s not visible anywhere:

1. Downgrade your Dev users to (view only team rights and) viewer-restricted
2. Then they can send an upgrade request from their side
3. In a separate modal you can then accept those upgrade request
4. You will not see any difference at all (!) in the team member overview, there it will still only show viewer-restricted, but the devs will then be able to use Dev Mode Standalone while still having no edit rights
5. On the billing page you will also see no information whatsoever about this, only that the number of “Design” seats will go up by the number of accepted upgrade requests. There is no breakdown or information or detail whatsoever that this is related to Dev Mode Standalone.

For the lack of knowing who to tag for this from Figma’s side, @Figma_Moderation: Imho you urgently have to fix

1. the documentation and
2. the team member list pages and billing overview pages

to reflect who is using a dev standalone seat or not.

Furthermore I’d strongly advise for giving team admins the possibility to give people a dev mode standalone seat directly, without having to go through the hoops of downgrading them + letting them send an upgrade request + accepting it (but not being able to see anywhere that you did it)…

PS: Because of (imho silly) posting rules for new users I had to first delete my previous post above to be able to post this one. Here’s the deleted post from Feb 19 10:19 AM:

Having said the above, looking at https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/articles/19813618057623-Dev-Mode-is-out-of-beta-what-admins-need-to-know#h_01HKN19J4JJTKGMATHW6BP331A, “Dev Mode Standalone” seems to be a thing but then not obvious how to get to it. I’ll check later once again and report back here if I found a solution

Figma posting rules say I could have edited my previous post but I don’t see an edit button (only delete which then shows up as edited)…

Furthermore I can only tag two people at the time so can’t tag the others in this thread:
maybe someone else (@Nikita_Nayak ?) can tag those people who is not under the new users restrictions:

@Derek_Jones @Jordan_White @Kelly_Battista @Agathe_Mametz @Ben 

But the Figma documentation states that the ‘standalone dev seat’ is only available on Organisation and Enterprise plans… so this won’t work for the Professional plan. It is also $25 and $35 for standalone on those plans which is ridiculous pricing for access to specs!