Design System Library Ghost Changes Appearing After No Changes

Hi ​@Mattschuh, thanks for reaching out! 

I completely understand how this must be slowing down your workflow. “Ghost changes" can happen in a few scenarios. The most likely culprit here is that the design system file you received from the third party may contain components or assets in a hidden canvas that were previously published but never fully cleaned up. When Figma's sync process runs, it detects these as "pending" changes, even if nothing visible has been touched.

A few clarifying questions to help us narrow this down:

1. Did the third party hand over the file with an existing publish history, or was this a fresh publish after handover?

2. Are the "changes" pointing to specific components in the publish modal, or does it just show a count with no detail?

3. Have you checked for any hidden pages or layers in the file (pages that might not be immediately visible in the pages panel)?

In the meantime, here are a few things worth trying:

• Open every page in the file and let it fully load before opening the publish modal. (It sounds like you've tried this, but doing it in one uninterrupted session can sometimes help Figma reconcile the state.)
• Check if there are hidden or archived components by searching for components across all pages.

Let us know these details and if any of the recommendations help. We can continue to troubleshoot this together. 

Hello, thank you for the reply.

1. From third party, “Yes, there will have been an existing publish history with the system. But it's worth noting this was a fresh import into your Figma account, so I'm unsure whether this would wipe any previous history or not.”
2. It details specific components
3. There are no hidden pages in the file — there are hidden layers but this seems normal behaviour (some variants of components hide layers for example). There are no hidden main components in the file

Reloading every page before opening the publish modal had no effect.

Hi ​@Mattschuh, thanks for the additional context! 

Based on what you've shared, the most likely cause here is a publish history mismatch from the handover. When a file is imported into a new Figma account, the existing publish history comes along with it, but your account has no prior "last published" snapshot to reconcile against. Figma sees the gap between the original agency's publish state and the current file state as pending changes, even when nothing looks visually different to you. The fact that specific components are listed is a useful clue. Can you please clarify the following?

• Do any of the affected component names start with a period (.) or underscore (_)?
  • These prefixes hide components from publishing, but Figma can still flag them as "modified" in certain states, causing them to loop.

If that's the case, there's a temporary solution worth trying:

1. Temporarily remove the . or _ prefix from the flagged components
2. Publish them to "flush" their state
3. Re-add the prefix if you'd like to keep them hidden from the library

If the component names don't have those prefixes, this is a known platform-level issue that a few other teams have encountered after design system handovers, and it may need a deeper look from our support team with direct file access to resolve cleanly. Either way, you're not doing anything wrong here. This is a quirk of how Figma handles publish history on imported files. Let us know what you find, and I can help get you connected with our technical quality team, if needed. 

Hello, thanks for the reply.

The affected component names do not start with a period or underscore.

I raised a ticket with Figma’s support team but included a link to this community thread so they have the full context of the issue so far.

Thank you for your help!