Motion and prototyping

Hey ​@Marcin_Mastalerz_2 — welcome to the Figma Forum, and thanks for sharing this!

Before jumping in, I want to make sure I'm following what you're experiencing: It sounds like you've placed an animated menu component (built with Motion) into a prototype frame, and the animation auto-plays and loops as soon as the prototype loads — rather than waiting for an action like a tap or click to open the menu. Does that sound right?

If the looping is the main pain point, the Playback setting on the Motion timeline controls this. Setting it to Play once would stop the animation from repeating indefinitely. You can find more on that here: Use the Figma Motion timeline → Playback.

That said, the ability to trigger a Motion animation via a prototype interaction (e.g. play only when a menu is opened) doesn't appear to be available yet — so if that's what you're after, it may be a current limitation of the beta.

To help me point you in the right direction or flag this more specifically to the team, could you share a bit more about what you're trying to achieve? That context would also help me explore whether Figma's prototyping tools (interactive components, smart animate, etc.) might be the best path forward for now. Thanks again for bringing this up!

I think this misses the actual issue.

The “Play once” option is generally understood as a preview/timeline playback setting, not as a prototype behavior setting. When working on motion, looping is often necessary because you need to repeatedly check timing, easing, and transitions while editing.

But in prototype mode, the expected behavior is different. If I place an animated menu component on a screen, I usually expect it to play once, or to be controlled by an interaction. I do not expect it to automatically start and loop forever as soon as the prototype loads.

So I don’t think “set playback to Play once” fully solves the problem. Motion playback settings and prototype playback behavior should be separated.

Ideally:

• In Motion editing mode, looping should remain the default, because it is useful for reviewing animation.

• In Prototype mode, animations should default to playing once, or at least have a clear “pause on load” / “play on interaction” option.

• Looping in prototypes should be an explicit prototype setting, not inherited from the motion editing workflow.

Right now it feels like a timeline preview behavior is leaking into prototype behavior, and that makes animated components hard to use for very common UI cases like opening menus, intro states, overlays, or microinteractions.

Thanks, ​@YoungoneKim — this is a really useful clarification. The distinction between timeline preview behavior and prototype playback behavior is important, and I hear you on your point about patterns like menus, overlays, and intro states. I'll make sure your insight gets to the team with that framing.

Please keep sharing as you continue exploring Motion in the beta — your experience helps influence where it goes next. 🙏🏻

​@Marcin_Mastalerz_2  i had the same issue and found a workaround for the “pause at load”.

Design and keyframe your animation in Motion as usual, but make sure to leave 1ms of inactivity in the beginning.
Switch to design, go to prototype for your animation component/group, and add an “after delay” interaction set to 1ms to Play/pause. 
This will stop autoplay, and then you need to set a click or mouse enter interaction to manually trigger it.

Hope this helps!