Random frames defaulting to Absolute Position when applying Auto-Layout

@y_toku I also faced this problem and seeing that this is intentional behavior is disappointing, to be honest. Instead of quickly hitting Shift+A and adding AL, I need additionally go inside and remove the absolute position. If I make ex. a table with AL it becomes tedious unnecessary work that Figma added on top

Completely agree with you here, my entire team has been super frustrated with the extra effort this requires. Absolute positioning is (in my opinion) a last resort setting that should only be applied when the other settings will not get the job done. When applied, that object doesn’t behave dynamically like the rest of the objects within the frame, so I never want to use it unless I have to. It seems like they have over-indexed for the edge cases rather than just supporting typical expected behavior. Sad to hear; was hoping that this was a bug and would be fixed eventually.

I’m also disappointed and sort of stunned that this is expected behavior. Autolayout is useful because it saves time aligning elements - no time is saved if you have to align perfectly before applying autolayout.

This issue is happening for me, too. Can someone from Figma reply with what’s going on?

This is happening to me every time I create an auto layout - it’s the most frustrating thing ever! I would expect that even if I don’t have the layers in the right position, creating an auto layout should at least assume it will go in the horizontal or vertical direction. I feel like Figma used to do this, and it’s only recently turned buggy with this absolute position behaviour.

This is absolutely unacceptable. It is a horrible thing to force absolutely positioned objects on designers who then have to go back in and do it the right way.

I think what angers me…really…angers me, is the fact that Figma acts like this is just how it is.

It has notr ALWAYS been like this. The thing used to work in a way that did not make designers go in and undo a bunch of things just to be able to sdo our jobs.

But somehow Figma (again) took the easy way out and said “We can’t figure out how to do it right…so let’s just absolutely position it and let the users deal with it.”

THAT part is not acceptable.

I have the additional fun that random elements inside a already existing component become absolute from time to time when they are triggered by component boolean like “Show Icon”.
In some instances the icon works and is shown as expected, in other cases it gets absolut positioning without the possibility to change it as it is inside a component.

I’m also experiencing this when using boolean component properties! A layer within the component instance will randomly become absolutely positioned, requiring me to break the component to get the expected layout. Hoping this is a bug and not intentional behaviour because I don’t know when this would ever be helpful

This same thing is happening to me. It’s overriding the layout of component instances. Why would you override the layout of my own component?!!

And what is even more infuriating is that I cant override what Figma has overridden. I cant remove absolute position to a layer in a component instance that Figma has randomly decided to make absolute.