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figma.createConnector has always been limited to FigJam.

A few years ago, I wrote a workaround plugin that allowed users to quickly clone and relink existing FigJam connectors in Figma.

However, it recently started throwing this error:

Error: in clone: Cloning CONNECTOR nodes is not supported in the current editor

I’m wondering if Figma has changed and restricted their API. Since there’s no last updated date on the API page, I’m not entirely sure. It also seems like there may no longer be any viable workaround :(

I’m unsure about the API question, but this FlowConnect plugin seems to have found a decent workaround. I’m not sure how they went about it, but it seems they were able to include Figma’s clipboard data for the connector object in the plugin such that it allows for copying/pasting right in the Figma file.

Hi ​@Bryce_Driesenga, thanks for your reply!
Did you try FlowConnect this week? It doesn’t seem to be working on my side either 🤔

same issue for my plugin

 

Hi ​@Bryce_Driesenga, thanks for your reply!
Did you try FlowConnect this week? It doesn’t seem to be working on my side either 🤔

Ah shoot, well that’s annoying. Hopefully someone from Figma can help!

Stating the obvious maybe but given 951k users of the Autoflow plugin; and actual native connectors in Figjam - I think the community would love that functionality natively in Figma!

 

Hey everyone! I’ve seen some discussion about this between some of our engineers, and here are some answers:

 

The CONNECTOR node type is specific to FigJam, and should never have been allowed by the API in Figma Design. This was inconsistently enforced before; createConnector only worked in FigJam as intended, but cloning nodes allowed connector nodes to be created in Figma Design. This is unsupported, and therefore carried risk of unexpected behavior or breakage. The API has now been updated to enforce this consistently.

 

If this sounds familiar, you may have seen discussion on this in our Friends of Figma Discord server recently -- if not, and you’d like to check that out, you can visit here to join: https://discord.com/invite/figma

Hope this helps!
 

​@ksn I think many of us would really like to understand more about the why behind this. While we all want the option of creating connectors natively in Figma Design, we were doing absolutely fine using the numerous plugins to do so and understood it wasn’t officially supported. 

Especially considering that I believe everyone with Figma Design access also has FigJam access, so it doesn’t seem it could be a financial or business reason.

I don’t understand the cost/benefit analysis here where you’re degrading the product experience for thousands of people for no benefit I can come up with, but I’m happy to hear if I’m missing something! 😊

​@ksn That's quite a surprise. I was relying heavily on "Give me FigJam connectors!" plugin. It singlehandedly brought more value and speedup to my working process than all Figma updates in the past 3 years combined. And now it’s functionality is removed. Good update 🙃

 

The CONNECTOR node type is specific to FigJam, and should never have been allowed by the API in Figma Design. This was inconsistently enforced before; createConnector only worked in FigJam as intended, but cloning nodes allowed connector nodes to be created in Figma Design. This is unsupported, and therefore carried risk of unexpected behavior or breakage. The API has now been updated to enforce this consistently.


 

 

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