Sharing a prototype without having user required to sign in to Figma

Hi,

I’ve noticed that people who are reporting the problem (i’m one of them) use a business Figma account provided by their organization. Prototype share settings might be different from the personal accounts. For instance, I can’t share the prototype with “Anyone with the link” because it’s disabled by Admin. Instead I can only share it within the organization.

Figma offers an alternative way to share a prototype by sending an invite via email. However, in order to use it a recipient must to have a Figma account. This defeats the purpose of using the prototype function as users who don’t have a Figma account can’t use it.

This is a very frustrating gap in Figma functionality. This is especially true for UX Researches who rely on Figma for usability studies.

I am also experiencing this same issue. I just contacted support.

If I set it to “can view” instead of “can view prototypes” then it doesn’t prompt for a login, but that’s not what I want to share.

I will update here once I hear back from support. I linked this thread as well.

UPDATE and FIX

As @Michael_Taggart mentioned above, the following should work:

1. Present your prototype first. IMPORTANT!
2. In the presentation window, at the top right you’ll see “Share Prototype”. Click that
3. Then click the “Copy link” at the top of the small modal

If you click the “Share” button in Figma while designing and choose that “Copy link” it will not work. Apparently that’s sharing a link to edit the file, not view the prototypes. (even though both the “Share” and “Share Prototype” buttons bring up the same modal.

I just sent my links as you proposed here https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/requests/new using my Figma account email and I shared it with support-share@figma.com:

From the first one I just got email with some links to articles, all that I already know.

From the email address support-share I got this answer:

" Hello,

We’re writing to let you know that the group you tried to contact (support-share) may not exist, or you may not have permission to post messages to the group. A few more details on why you weren’t able to post:

** You might have spelled or formatted the group name incorrectly.*
** The owner of the group may have removed this group.*
** You may need to join the group before receiving permission to post.*
** This group may not be open to posting.*

If you have questions related to this or any other Google Group, visit the Help Center at https://support.google.com/a/figma.com/bin/topic.py?topic=25838.

Thanks,

figma.com admins"

I don’t get it, what group should I join to get the answer.

Has anyone solved this problem?

It doesn’t seem right. Could you share the case number so we can check?

Thanks,
Toku

Ran into this issue this morning. Insanely frustrating.

Scenario:

• I can’t view the prototype via a share link in Safari
• I can in Chrome (likely because I’m a Figma user logged into chrome?)
• Coworker can not see it in chrome
• this was working fine earlier in the week.

The specific issue is this 401 error we get with trying to access prototype/view:

24
162
26.0 MB
2.29 MB
28
1.21s
Summary
URL: https://www.figma.com/api/files/[GUID]/prototype/view
Status: 401 Unauthorized
Source: Network

Any suggestions?

I’ve tried copying the prototype into new pages and even new Figma files but all end up with the same problem.

UPDATE:

Quick update…it does appear that asking users to use private/incognito mode resolves this issue. Clumsy workaround but at least we can get to the prototype. Maybe this is a clue that may help the Figma team debug this issue.

We are still struggling to replicate this, so could you reach out to our support team?

I can’t share anything. create a new file in new project and still it asks to log in when shared “anyone with the link”. What a sorry support can’t do anything and don’t know how to diagnose issue.

Hey @RonMan, sorry for the trouble and confusion!

My reply from February is outdated. Have you tried all the workarounds that were suggested by the community after my previous reply above?

UPDATE:
Quick update…it does appear that asking users to use private/incognito mode resolves this issue. Clumsy workaround but at least we can get to the prototype.

Most of these solutions were also suggested by the support team. Depending on your account type, OS, and app/browser/device you’re using, any one of these workarounds should help!

Sharing with “Anyone can view” works over here to get around the login requirement, but there’s still a thick banner taking up 25% of the screen telling viewers to create an account that can’t be removed, obstructing the design to our clients. We can’t really use Figma for our client projects when it’s like this.