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pterisaur
New Participant
April 28, 2025

Allow for component positioning, even when instances are "simplified"

  • April 28, 2025
  • 3 replies
  • 221 views

Our design system has many components that can’t be edited beyond what is available in the props list. In the past, we generally enabled the “simplify all instances” option for these types of components (things like icons, checkboxes, switches, etc.). With the latest UI, “simplify all instances” hides the alignment features within the Position section of the design panel by default, which means any designer wanting to align one of these components within their design must first un-hide additional properties.

 

It seems to me that a component’s alignment to other components shouldn’t be an “additional property” — positioning components within a layout is the first thing we do, and doesn’t involve editing the component itself. As a result, we’ve had to disable the “simplify” option across the board to make things easier for designers. This means displaying extra layers unnecessarily.

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3 replies

Eli_Crow
New Participant
May 1, 2025

This must have been a recent regression. I was very surprised to see those controls disappear.

Joey Fajnor
New Member
July 31, 2025

This has been a huge pain point recently. In my experience, a simplified component won’t even show the position panel when expanded anymore, meaning there is no way to align/absolutely position a component which has simplified properties without detaching. Please fix this Figma!

Josh_Behrendt
New Member
August 4, 2025

Yup, I’ve just run into this problem too. I swear this must be a relatively recent change. Does Figma intend for simple instances to be positioned only via auto layout? Let us make the choice