🚨 Variables: Deleted collections and modes don't disappear

hi, this is still a serious issue … how am i supposed to work professionally with this?!
please asap implement the following options for variable collection updates:

in the importing file

• option ‘delete all variable sets’ (at ones own risk)

• option 'delete all orphaned / unused sets (and really make it work! this seems to be one of the main issues here, that even though there are no links any more to variables, their sets still appear as an option

• update options for variable set imports:

1. ‘overwrite all variables’; note that this implies logically that there may be some orphaned assignments after the update, in case there were tokens deleted that have been in the last update

2. ‘rename variables’: this may be a bit tricky with the linkage (how do you know that semantic/primary/button/default is the same as semantic/primary/button/bg in the last update?); i guess here a detailed delta matrix would actually help where one can decide which variable became what … i know this is a lot to ask, but this problem just logically arises if you work professionally with this kind of stuff

3. have an overview for all the listed token sets that are available in the UI and the option to brute force delete them!! sorry, but i do find it very disturbing that this is not possible – there is a REASON why they are still listed as options, and it is a total timehole to find out why and where. the only thing that can logically happen with this is that there are now some raw values again, where there had been ‘unlinked’ variable values before … i think you get the point. but it would really help keep things sorted and cleaned up …

in case you have questions, please get back to me
christian.schaefer@siemensgamesa.com

thanks …

SAME ISSUE. I dont want to have tp permanentely delete design work just to free it from a variable used in an old library!

Same same… Sometimes it actually works but if I bring in a component that is older and was made with previous variables that were replaced, it will still show all the previous collections.

When will this be fixed? This has been causing our team issues for over half a year now…

This is happening for me as well now. It didn’t previously happen until today. I am so frustrated.

Hey All, if Jake’s suggestion above doesn’t work, please ping him directly as mentioned above.

As a PM for variables, he’ll be your best best to continue troubleshooting.

I did this and still haven’t heard back 😕

Hi there!

I sent an email two days ago and haven’t received a response yet. Just wanted to check in on it.

Thanks!

Figma surprises me a lot. No effort is being made to solve this problem. 😢

I am also waiting for messages on this topic to solve the problem.

Hey All, so sorry for the delayed reply!

Jake is likely busy with Config 2024 being less than two weeks away. I can confirm that this is now a long-standing bug that our team is aware of. They have eyes on this thread and will continue to log in order to consistently reproduce the issue and fix.

While we can’t guarantee when that will happen, if you’re able to share your files with us to add to our current bug report, please do so here: https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Same issue for me… hours on my files to try to detect where I left a wrong reference. I unpublished, republished, changed collections names.
Then I tryed all workaround possible but this is not working. Hopefully you will find a way to correct this issue. And also give us more tools to monitor variables and references.

I had the same issue. After a lot of searching I managed to track it down to an instance of a component where the original local component did not exist. The “Detach deleted variables” did not find find this. It would be nice to have a quick way to find and detach deleted components as well as variables.

Facing this issue too, wouldn’t mind sharing my files for debug. Have a complex design system setup and it’s nearly impossible to track down all the loose variables.

Hi guys! 👋

I have happy news for you. 🥰 Friends, I found how to solve the problem.

First, we use the “Select Layers” plug-in and the “Detach Variables” plug-in to delete the variables that do not exist in our file. With this plug-in, we use the “detach variable” plug-in by automatically selecting the instance layers, components and frames. (When using this plug-in, you must apply it to all pages in the file.)

Then, we follow the same path and this time we do “detach deleted variables” with Figma spotlight. (again by selecting layers on all pages)

and bingo!

All variable relationships in your file will be removed. Then, using the “Apply variables” plugin, we match the detached components in our file with our new variable collection.

I think I am quite an expert on the subject and I can help those who cannot do it in their processes.

Oh joy, my 1,000 bug in Figma I’ve come across in the last few years. I copy/paste a single icon from another file (detached as well) and now I have a theme cached that is NOT referenced anywhere in the file, including the single-layer icon with zero reference to the theme from the other file.

Maybe Figma should start outsourcing their bug fixes so they don’t sit in the backlog for years with no resolutions.

This seems…insane. I’ve spent half the day exploring “work-arounds” for ghost variables. Commenting to keep the thread alive.

Still have this issue as well!! Please fix Figma!
With the redesigned Figma changing the mode is also harder than it used to be, making it super problematic when a component sometimes take over an old mode. A mode that has been delete more than 1 year ago!!!

After I updated Figma, it was really hard to use. I deleted all variants but when I select an object and change color, it shows all the variants I deleted even though I filtered by local variant. Would love for Figma to improve the ux better. Terrible experience

How is that a solution to this problem?

Sorry for the confusion, @Nouela.

Of course it’s not the solution. But it’s a way for the community team here to pin our acknowledgement of the issue to the top of the topic, so that users know what to provide and where to send it in order for our team to continue to work on the fix, instead of simply saying that we need to fix the issue.

If we don’t have example files, we’re not able to reproduce the issue consistently, which is the only way to pin point how to fix it.

Hi! Any chance you can record a video of your process? I have a complex component with nested elements and I’m not sure if I am using the Select Layers plug-in correctly to select everything. Much appreciated! Thank you.

This is also happening for me — did anyone find a workaround or a fix for this yet? I sent in an issue through the form but it is frustrating. Happy to send the example file your way as well to debug.

I’ve encountered an issue with variables in my Figma library. I deleted several variables from the library, but when I published the library and updated my design file, the deleted variables were not removed. They still occupy space in the workspace.

When I return to the library and publish changes again, I notice that while components are updated correctly, the variables remain unchanged and are not deleted even after multiple publishing attempts.

This affects my workflow, as I can’t fully remove unused variables. Any guidance on resolving this would be greatly appreciated.