Slides looks visually appealing, but its notable absence of the Auto Layout feature (unless, I’m also missing something!), similar to Figma’s core offering, is a major drawback. Requiring a workaround by creating elements using Auto Layout in Figma and pasting them into their Slides offering is inefficient and time-consuming.

I think you’re missing something—when you switch to design mode you can set child elements to fill in both directions.

This took me forever as well. You have to switch to design mode.

In the top right corner, we have “design” and “animate”. I was reading this as “of course I’m in design mode, it says right there”. In Figma (not slides), you switch between design and prototype mode using that control.

Turns out, there’s another “design mode”, and that’s how you get to autolayout. That toggle is in the floating toolbar in the bottom-middle.

Now that I’ve stumbled upon that, it makes sense, but this needs some work.

wow yea, I had the same thought process. I just found the real design mode—thanks for sharing!

Thank you so much for sharing! I didn’t know there’s a design mode at all and was struggling with the spacing/alignment.

For anyone else struggling to find the “auto layout” function, it is as what @Corey_McCue pointed out – you have to toggle the real “design mode” on the bottom-middle toolbar. See screenshot below:

Once toggled, you can press shift + A like you would in Figma to set auto-layout.

Source: https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/articles/25423848723863-Use-design-mode-in-Figma-Slides#h_01J4HVZ83VQ865CECFSZVC433V

OMG thank you all! I thought I was already in design mode already!!! Haha, flipped the switch and here’s all my positioning properties! I thought it was strange that Figma would have left that out of Slides right from the jump.

Thanks for the tips everyone!