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Question

Design System Library Ghost Changes Appearing After No Changes

  • June 18, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 9 views
Mattschuh

We recently hired a third party to create a design system for us. They handed it over to us and the only change we have made was updating the typography variables so it used our licensed fonts. We published with the new fonts.

Since the handover we have had various changes appearing in the publish modal. At one point it was up to 79 changes after no actual changes from anyone working on the system — we have a small team of 2 designers and no other stakeholders accessing it so this was easy to verify. After publishing the 79 changes we noticed no visual differences but another 6 changes appeared again.

We have tried opening every page and ensuring it all loaded before publishing but still after visiting all pages again another 2 changes appeared.

Can someone please help us understand why this is happening and how to stop it?

1 reply

djv
Figmate
  • djv
  • Community Support
  • June 18, 2026

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. 

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