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Best answer by Celine_

Hey ​@Damian_Summersall , thanks for follow up here! I can see that our support team has replied to you.
Sharing here for others in the community who encounter similar issue.

Our support team has checked internally, and unfortunately, there is currently no functionality that prevents users from inserting non-preferred instances.
We’ve gone ahead and submit a feature request on your behalf and send it over to our product and engineering teams for review and consideration.


Thanks for your understanding, I am marking as ‘Best Answer’ so others in the community can see the latest update about this request.

12 replies

Jaycee Lewis
Figmate
Figmate
July 1, 2026

Hey ​@Damian_Summersall 👋 Thanks for the recording, that's really helpful.

To help narrow this down, could you let me know whether you're on the desktop app or browser, and which OS? Also, when you tested this, was it only through what’s shown in the video, or did you also try dragging a different instance directly onto the slot? I wonder if the behavior is the same either way. Talk soon! — Jaycee

Damian_Summersall
New Participant
July 2, 2026

Sure, it’s the desktop app on macOS 26.5.1. Yes, I hadn’t tried dragging, but I've just tried it and dragging also works. The same applies for the browser version (Safari 26.5). 

Jaycee Lewis
Figmate
Figmate
July 2, 2026

Hi, ​@Damian_Summersall 👋 I opened a support ticket for this. The ID is 1995294. Keep an eye on your inbox for any follow-up questions or replies from support. Thanks! — Jaycee 

imboting
New Member
July 29, 2026

I have same problem!🙋

Celine_
Figmate
Community Support
July 29, 2026

Hey ​@imboting , Celine from Figma here, stepping in for ​@Jaycee Lewis on this one. Thanks for flagging this, and sorry for the trouble it's causing! 

We're currently looking into ​@Damian_Summersall ‘s report, but we're still waiting to hear back from them with more details, so we haven't been able to reproduce the issue on our end yet. It's really helpful to know you're seeing the same behavior.

If it's still happening for you, would you mind submitting a bug report through our secure form.  To do that: Go to the Support Hub / Type “Report a bug, contact agent” / Click Start a chat, select Enter and follow the prompts.

Please include:

  • A link to the affected file and grant "Can View" access with support-share@figma.com
  • A short screen recording showing the behavior.
  • The steps to reproduce the issue, if you've identified them.

That'll give our team everything they need to investigate and try to reproduce it properly. Thank you!

Damian_Summersall
New Participant
July 29, 2026

@Celine_ I’ve just replied to the email I got yesterday with another recording, for reference. 

Celine_
Figmate
Celine_Answer
Community Support
August 5, 2026

Hey ​@Damian_Summersall , thanks for follow up here! I can see that our support team has replied to you.
Sharing here for others in the community who encounter similar issue.

Our support team has checked internally, and unfortunately, there is currently no functionality that prevents users from inserting non-preferred instances.
We’ve gone ahead and submit a feature request on your behalf and send it over to our product and engineering teams for review and consideration.


Thanks for your understanding, I am marking as ‘Best Answer’ so others in the community can see the latest update about this request.

jbrycedavis
New Participant
August 18, 2026

We’re having the same issue as well.


 and then dragging another component or frame into it - i receive a message, but it stays in the slot and is visible.
 


This seems like a behavior that would be prohibited if that checkbox is checked.

Jaycee Lewis
Figmate
Figmate
August 19, 2026

Hey, ​@jbrycedavis 👋 Looking at the Help center article and what my teammate ​@Celine_ shared above, this is working-as-designed-but-not-as-you-expect. The disconnect, to my eye, is that the setting informs versus enforces, while the popup text reads as enforce not inform. I’ll pass that along as feedback. 

One question if you have a sec — with the non-preferred layer still sitting in the slot, select the slot (or its parent instance) and look at the Limits label in the right sidebar. Does it show an orange warning icon?

Thank you! — Jaycee

jbrycedavis
New Participant
August 19, 2026

All i see is: 

if I click on it then, yes - but there’s no affordance to even tell me it’s clickable until you told me. It looks just like the Modified above it which is not clickable - the only difference is color.

Once i click on it it looks like this:
 


In my opinion, when looking at the Master’s slot property’s settings, Preferred instances at the bottom (if set) are (as you put it [and I like]) Inform, but when I click the “Only allow preferred instances” checkbox, that changes my decision from Inform to Enforce/Restrict.