Increasing amount of bugs

Hey, ​@Jeffrey_Kroonstuiver! Sorry to hear you are struggling - there’s a lot here so I’ve got a really good picture of how much it’s affecting you and your collaboration with other teams.

I’m going to try and address each point individually even though I think a few might be related. I don’t want to miss anything that you’ve included.

• Instances of components sometimes appear empty (this seems to be related to slots?).
  • Is it the slot that appears empty, or other child layers within a component as well?
• Changing properties for components with slots no longer work if the content within the slots was edited.
  • Do these properties of the parent component affect the slot in any way? If they affect the parent and not the slot, in what way are they being used with the parent?
• Placement of layers seems ‘off’, until the layer is selected and automatically restores its placement.
  • Can you try using “regenerate all instances” from the action menu when you see this? We resolved an issue recently that caused behavior like this and regenerating instances will fix. If that doesn’t help then I’ll look into this further. 
• Instances of components that are inserted (Shift + i) are completely empty and void of layers.
  • Does this ever “fix itself” by closing and reopening the file, or something else? I wasn’t sure if it stays in this empty state permanently or not.
• Copying main components from our spec files to our UI kit causes the variants to become duplicated within resulting in twice the number of variants and causing conflicts. (I’ve raised a support ticket for this.)
  • Thanks for submitting this. I found your ticket and raised the priority for you - you should hear back soon on this one!
• Opening or reloading a design file causes some layers to change from filling the height to hugging the height or vise versa. (This, again, can most often be fixed by selecting the layer.)
  • This may be the same issue as above where the placement of layers is off - let me know if regenerating instances does not fix this. 
• Inability to edit text layers until I reload a design file.
  • When you are trying to edit a text layer, can you tell if the layer is selected correctly within the layers panel on the left? I want to discern whether the issue is specifically getting the layer to go into editing mode, or if it’s getting the layer selected properly at all.
• Crashes of plugins when used with layers in slots, most notably Contrast.
  • Have you tried contacting the makers of these plugins yet? They may need to make updates to support Slots, and they can reach out to us if they discover something that requires action on our end.

Let me know if I’ve missed the mark with any of these!

Welcome to the world of a vibe coded app thanks to the all powerful AI. Our team literally has never experienced the amount of bugs until the last 3-6 months. We feel your pain.

@adamsmasher, thank you for the inquiries. It takes quite a bit of time to give an elaborate explanation for everything, but I’ll do what I can.

• Instances of components sometimes appear empty (this seems to be related to slots?).
  • Is it the slot that appears empty, or other child layers within a component as well?
    • The slot still contains the top-level instance, but the instance does not contain its children. 
       

      

       

• Changing properties for components with slots no longer work if the content within the slots was edited.
  • Do these properties of the parent component affect the slot in any way? If they affect the parent and not the slot, in what way are they being used with the parent?
    • I would say yes, but I’m unsure if you’d agree, so I’ll try to explain. We use a Card component that has 3 slots of which 2 are optionally shown. Linked to our global responsive utilities, we change the direction of autolayout using variants. On larger devices we can show rows, while on smaller devices they become columns.
       
• Placement of layers seems ‘off’, until the layer is selected and automatically restores its placement.
  • Can you try using “regenerate all instances” from the action menu when you see this? We resolved an issue recently that caused behavior like this and regenerating instances will fix. If that doesn’t help then I’ll look into this further. 
    • I don’t see any issues of this type right now in the files that I’m working in and I don’t know if or how I would be able to produce it. I’ll try this command when I see the issue occurring and report back.
       
• Instances of components that are inserted (Shift + i) are completely empty and void of layers.
  • Does this ever “fix itself” by closing and reopening the file, or something else? I wasn’t sure if it stays in this empty state permanently or not.
    • No, sadly it doesn’t. It stays in this state permanently.

      

       

• Copying main components from our spec files to our UI kit causes the variants to become duplicated within resulting in twice the number of variants and causing conflicts. (I’ve raised a support ticket for this.)
  • Thanks for submitting this. I found your ticket and raised the priority for you - you should hear back soon on this one!
    • I got a reply, I’ll get back to this asap.
       
• Opening or reloading a design file causes some layers to change from filling the height to hugging the height or vise versa. (This, again, can most often be fixed by selecting the layer.)
  • This may be the same issue as above where the placement of layers is off - let me know if regenerating instances does not fix this. 
    • I’ll get back to this post once I can test your proposed solution.
       
• Inability to edit text layers until I reload a design file.
  • When you are trying to edit a text layer, can you tell if the layer is selected correctly within the layers panel on the left? I want to discern whether the issue is specifically getting the layer to go into editing mode, or if it’s getting the layer selected properly at all.
    • Yes, I can select the layer, but it doesn’t enter editing mode. (I’ve attempted both by pressing Enter/Return and CMD + double clicking.)
       
• Crashes of plugins when used with layers in slots, most notably Contrast.
  • Have you tried contacting the makers of these plugins yet? They may need to make updates to support Slots, and they can reach out to us if they discover something that requires action on our end.
    • I’ve not done so myself, but I’ve seen that other people have reached out.

​@adamsmasher Any updates about any of these things?

I’ve been in contact with support over the last couple of days about the copying issues of the main components between the spec files and UI kit, but they’ve not yet found a solution.

Thanks!

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions! I made a ticket for the following two issues, so you should get that via email shortly:

• Instances of components with slots that sometimes appear empty. The slot still contains the top-level instance, but the instance does not contain its children.
• Instances of components that are inserted (Shift + i) are completely empty and void of layers. These are not fixed by closing and re-opening the file.

Regarding the other issues in your reply we can address at the moment:

Changing properties for components with slots no longer work if the content within the slots was edited.

• Do these properties of the parent component affect the slot in any way? If they affect the parent and not the slot, in what way are they being used with the parent?
  • I would say yes, but I’m unsure if you’d agree, so I’ll try to explain. We use a Card component that has 3 slots of which 2 are optionally shown. Linked to our global responsive utilities, we change the direction of autolayout using variants. On larger devices we can show rows, while on smaller devices they become columns.

Ok, so to recap: if you add slot content and then change the variant of the parent to the other one with a different auto-layout flow, it doesn’t switch variants?

Inability to edit text layers until I reload a design file.

• When you are trying to edit a text layer, can you tell if the layer is selected correctly within the layers panel on the left? I want to discern whether the issue is specifically getting the layer to go into editing mode, or if it’s getting the layer selected properly at all.
  • Yes, I can select the layer, but it doesn’t enter editing mode. (I’ve attempted both by pressing Enter/Return and CMD + double clicking.)

Is this with the desktop app, browser, or both? Does it happen immediately upon opening the file to edit or is it something that only happens after a while. Does it happen repeatedly with the same text layers, or is it more random?

Let me know if I missed anything! We’ve got a several different things going on so I don’t want anything to fall through the cracks - especially if we might need additional tickets to triage everything appropriately.

Placement of layers seems ‘off’, until the layer is selected and automatically restores its placement.

• Can you try using “regenerate all instances” from the action menu when you see this? We resolved an issue recently that caused behavior like this and regenerating instances will fix. If that doesn’t help then I’ll look into this further. 
  • I don’t see any issues of this type right now in the files that I’m working in and I don’t know if or how I would be able to produce it. I’ll try this command when I see the issue occurring and report back.

I’ve not been able to get back to your latest response, ​@adamsmasher, but I did have the chance to test the situation where the position of elements was ‘off’. After using the ‘regenerate all instances (slow)’ command, it indeed fixed the placement.

Not a problem, ​@Jeffrey_Kroonstuiver! I’m glad that it fixed the placement for you.

Hi,

We're experiencing all of the issues, bugs, unexpected behavior changes, and inconsistencies described in this thread. Unfortunately, we've also encountered another issue that has become a major blocker for our Design System workflow.

Our Design System has been evolving for over five years, and one of our core patterns was created long before Figma introduced Slots.

We have a base component called DS Card, which contains another component called Placeholder Content.

Our intended workflow was:

• Create a new, more specific component based on the DS Card.
• Replace the Placeholder Content component with another content component designed for a specific use case (this component has its own properties and variants).
• Publish that as a reusable, specialized component.
• Designers then use instances of this specialized component and freely configure the properties of the inner content component depending on the screen they're designing.

This workflow worked perfectly for years.

However, at some point this behavior changed.

Now, if we later edit the specialized component and change any property of the parent DS Card (for example, switching one of the Card's variants), Figma resets or overwrites all overridden properties of the inner content component across every existing instance.

In other words, designers lose all of the configuration they previously made to the content inside those instances.

This is extremely destructive because those overrides represent real design work across many screens.

As a consequence, we're now forced into one of two very poor alternatives:

• creating every possible content variation inside the content component and then recreating the same variations again in every specialized component that uses it, which quickly becomes unmaintainable, or
• using the base DS Card directly everywhere instead of creating reusable specialized components, which completely defeats the purpose of our component architecture.

To verify whether this was related to our older setup, we rebuilt the pattern using Figma Slots.

Instead of the original Placeholder Content component, we used a Slot wrapper and recreated the same workflow from scratch with newly created components.

Unfortunately, the problem still occurs.

Simply changing the variant of the parent Card causes all overrides of the slotted content inside existing instances to be lost.

We discussed this with the Figma AI support agent, which explained that switching variants changes the underlying node IDs. However, from a Design System perspective, this behavior is extremely problematic.

It means that changing something as simple as the Card's shadow, corner radius, or any other property implemented through variants effectively breaks every existing instance of every specialized component built on top of that Card. All previously configured overrides have to be recreated manually.

For teams maintaining large Design Systems, this makes evolving foundational components incredibly risky and results in an enormous amount of unnecessary rework.

Is this the expected behavior, or is it a bug? We were hoping that rebuilding the pattern using Slots would solve the issue, but unfortunately the behavior is exactly the same. If changing a parent component's variant always changes the underlying node IDs and invalidates overrides in nested content, it becomes extremely difficult to evolve foundational Design System components without breaking existing work.

Thanks for your reply, ​@EwaKaminska - that’s unfortunate that this is creating this much extra work for you and your team.  Just to make sure I understand you correctly when it comes to your new pattern with slots, you’re saying that when you change the parent component to a different variant that the content in the slot is lost? That is not expected behavior if that’s what you are seeing - once you change the content of a slot, that edited content is no longer linked to the parent and should be unaffected by variant swaps. 

However, component properties are no longer supported on layers inside a slot. It sounds like you may be doing that, but correct me if I am wrong. Hmm… From what I understand of your component setup with a Slot wrapper, it may help to keep component property bindings outside the slot wrapper boundary. By binding variables at the parent level to variants, etc, you can achieve the intended effect by changing modes rather than directly variant swapping (see our help article on binding variables to variant instances - or this video if you prefer that format).

Let me know if I haven’t understood your setup or the issue correctly, or if you do try what I suggested and continue to have trouble.

I can confirm that I’ve also been experiencing an increase of frames randomly being empty with the layers missing in the panel, or contents rendering weird but resetting when clicked.