How to clear “Used variables” that don’t exist in the file anymore?

Finally, you solved it! Thank you!

It’s not working for me. I have many text variables that I need to detach, but with the plugin scan I was only able to find components and not variables. The variables were brought in from the file called Website Refresh when I copied over some elements. What am I doing wrong?

If by ‘only able to find components’ you are talking about your second screenshot - The index library tab is used solely to ‘whitelist’ or ignore components and variables you don’t want to be identified as stray. So if the file that you are in right now ‘saltbox pitch deck’ does not have any variables created in it then it won’t show any on the index tab. If you are using the plugin to scan for variables in the ‘pitch deck’ file and it isn’t coming up with any results even though you know there are variables in it, then that would be an issue i’d have to look into.
Hope this help; if you are still having issues then maybe you can duplicate the target file, delete most of the content so there is only a small sampling of the text you are scanning that is not being recognized and share it and i can try and identify what is going wrong.

Finally removed ghost variables (manually check) – hope this helps!

Hi! Just want to share my experience dealing with ghost variables in Figma — those deleted variables that still show up in the mode dropdown even though they’re no longer in the file.

I ran into this while cleaning up my file. I deleted and recreated some variables, but found that old/ghost variables still existed in the dropdown. 

At first, I went page by page to check if any layer was still using the old variable. But that didn't remove the ghost variable collection. I tried a few plugins and checked hidden layers too — because if a layer is hidden, Figma doesn’t show the variable info in the right panel, so it's easy to miss.

Later, I used the "Apply Variable Mode" tool. I checked each page — if the ghost variable still showed up in the dropdown, I clicked into each section, then frame by frame, layer by layer, until I replaced everything. It took 2 full days, but finally the ghost variable disappeared from the dropdown.

Luckily my file isn't too big yet — just around 8 pages with 6–7 UIs per page. I’ve only used Figma for 6 months (I was an Adobe XD user for 7 years), and overall I really like Figma, even though it's still a bit buggy sometimes (well… my product has bugs too haha).

--

My tip: If you're starting a design system, plan early and plan big. Or else you’ll end up like me… keep fixing and adjusting over and over 😂

while i love the ingenuity everyone has shown with filling the gaps, whether they’re plugins or manually (and painstakingly) going through things layer-by-layer, this shouldn’t be the expected outcome for a tool that’s supposed to help us do our work? anyway, posting cause i don’t think this is solved because i have to actually involve support in my file to fix AND it keeps happening. please fix this.

THANK YOU - this WORKS!

First I've gotta give props to the plugin makers: Stray Component & Variable Finder is great, Variable Sherlock helped me out a lot too.

That being said, Figma approach to this bug is terrible. The problem is not a lack of file reviewing, its some sort of cache. I've deleted all pages of a given file and created a brand new empty one and there is still the Apply Variable Mode selector there.

Honestly, my company spends a lot in figma for this kind of lame simple bug to steal so much time from us.

Part of the issue is that Figma embeds Variable tokens at such a deep level sometimes (eg: a colour set as an underline on a component variant for hover state), and it doesn’t make it clear where you’re even pulling in the variables. Having a “select instances that use this variable value” type selector available directly from Figma is essential.

Figma: Why is this topic marked as solved, when it’s clearly not!

@figma how can such a huge bug stick around for more than two years? 

at least give us some insight into this weird caching you are doing so we can write a plugin that fixes this.

related issue