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Inner Shadow Highlight Disappears When Fill Is Removed

  • August 5, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 26 views
mosennouni

Hi Figma team,

I came across what seems to be a reproducible behavior while creating highlights using Inner Shadow.

When I create a highlight with an Inner Shadow and then remove the layer's Fill, the Inner Shadow disappears as well. I'm not sure if this is intentional or a bug, so I thought it was worth reporting. I've attached a short video demonstrating the behavior.

Best answer by Jaycee Lewis

Hey hey ​@mosennouni 🤩 Great question. 

This one is expected behavior rather than a bug. In Figma, Inner shadow is painted onto the layer's fill, so when you remove the fill there's no surface left for the shadow to render on. You can see this in the render order for layers.

Drop shadow has a Show behind transparent areas option for this situation, but Inner shadow doesn't support it — see "Show drop shadows through transparent layers" for more details

A few ways to get the highlight you're after while keeping the layer visually transparent:

  • Keep the fill and set its opacity to ~1%. The shadow renders and the layer still exports with a transparent background
  • Move the Inner shadow to a parent frame with Clip content enabled
  • Use a duplicate of the shape as a mask instead of removing the fill

One thing to know: adding a stroke with no fill won't help here 😢 — that only unlocks the Drop shadow toggle.

Have fun testing! — Jaycee

1 reply

Jaycee Lewis
Figmate
  • Jaycee Lewis
  • Figmate
  • Answer
  • August 5, 2026

Hey hey ​@mosennouni 🤩 Great question. 

This one is expected behavior rather than a bug. In Figma, Inner shadow is painted onto the layer's fill, so when you remove the fill there's no surface left for the shadow to render on. You can see this in the render order for layers.

Drop shadow has a Show behind transparent areas option for this situation, but Inner shadow doesn't support it — see "Show drop shadows through transparent layers" for more details

A few ways to get the highlight you're after while keeping the layer visually transparent:

  • Keep the fill and set its opacity to ~1%. The shadow renders and the layer still exports with a transparent background
  • Move the Inner shadow to a parent frame with Clip content enabled
  • Use a duplicate of the shape as a mask instead of removing the fill

One thing to know: adding a stroke with no fill won't help here 😢 — that only unlocks the Drop shadow toggle.

Have fun testing! — Jaycee

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