[Config 2025] Grid Auto Layout Flow — let’s hear what you think!
I was very excited to hear that grids were coming to Figma. CSS Grid was introduced years ago and brought with it many things that flexbox was incapable of doing, so I was hoping for a similar level of new capabilities here, and I genuinely cannot believe that this feature is being shipped in its current state (even as a ‘beta’). This is a very long post, but I feel like this feature has been implemented so poorly that it legitimately sows doubt in Figma’s capabilities to deliver features in the future.
Inability to ‘hug’ contents
Both rows and grids themselves are unable to resize themselves to match their contents (‘Hug”).
Row heights must be either “Auto” (1fr) or a fixed height, meaning that if you want your rows to be sized per their elements, you’ve now manually defined each row height in px (not even a variable value), and instead of getting a clean CSS output, now you have however many rows defined in exact values, destroying any chance of scalability.
This alone makes this feature nearly useless to me.
‘Cannot remove row from a grid when it has content’
One of the great aspects of CSS grid is that, without having to do anything to the children of the grid, I can change the number of columns/rows and the grid will re-flow all the elements for me.
Figma does not do this. It will add rows/columns only if they are larger than current, but it will not remove rows/columns unless they are empty, so you have to manually move everything into the place you want, and then you are able to remove the extra rows/columns. This is an incredibly cumbersome way to handle this and immediately made this feature hard to use.
Why do I even need to define the number of rows?
One of my biggest gripes with Figma’s ‘Fill’ mode is that there are no percentage based widths. Say I want my items to take up 25% width, but I only have 3 items total, I now have to create an empty ‘spacer’ frame so that my design can stay responsive without manually setting pixel values
With grid, well now I can define my number of columns and get the nice percentage based widths I want, but I also have to define the number of rows, making it incredibly tedious, and since I can’t even set their heights automatically, I genuinely might still be better off just using horizontal auto layout with spacer frames.
Inability to select the elements in a row/column all at once
In all other areas of Figma, selecting a parent and hitting Enter will select all children. In grid, selecting a row/column and hitting enter only allows you to change the width/height, you must manually select each item one by one.
Table behavior
After I’ve manually selected each item in a row, now I’d like to create a new row, let me hit Cmd+D and... After I’ve manually selected each item in a row, now I’d like to create a new row, let me hit Cmd+D and...
oh. This also happens in reverse when selecting an entire column. Tables to me seem like the most obvious use case of grid, because managing tables in Figma has been a pain for years, you either get nicely sized rows, or nicely sized columns, but now trying to use Grid for table somehow creates an even worse experience. Duplicating a row grants you more columns, and duplicating a column grants you more rows. You have to manually add the row/column first before duplication, and then it will work as expected.
I sincerely hope that some of these issues/limitations have already been addressed internally and are just not public facing yet. I’m very disappointed in this release, as Figma has had years to approach their CSS grid implementation, and they’ve provided a solution that is obnoxious to use and far too limited in scope.
Subject line updated by a moderator and linked to new features post on May 9, 2025 — changed from “Grid for Auto Layout is horribly limited in scope and very awkward to use” to “lConfig 2025] Grid Auto Layout Flow — let’s hear what you think!”.]
Page 1 / 3
I agree on most of these points. I don’t know how they could release a grid feature at the very least without being able to set the height to hug it’s contents. As it is right now, it’s so limited that I can’t really make use of it in responsive designs.
It’s annoying that Figma designer’s continue shift things around. Who thought that switching places of the gap width and the alignment was a good idea? Why?
Great summary @Alex_Mueller1 thanks for this
The lack of Hug is a (hug)e miss! My use case is related to asymmetrical form layouts with conditional reveals requiring the parent container height to hug as the total height of the child nodes+vertical gaps change.
Not that everyone would need this, but if you waned to prototype a table interaction where you change the background color of the row onHover event, there is no way to style or target the row or column containing the child nodes. Obviously you can change the cell/child individually, but this isn’t as common an experience for tables showing records/listings.
Also I note that you can’t benefit from the “responsive” auto-layout option whilst also using the grid option. Not hugely surprising, but it would be helpful to be able to switch layout when minWidth’s were crossed
Of course they could have just done this that was requested more than 2 years ago
I don’t know why Figma even asks for feedback. They just do an underbaked feature and make that overly complex. All we need is proper Flex support really
Add ‘hug’ to the rows. it’s basically the one thing that is needed for this to be useful. I want to make a grid frame with 1 row and 3 columns and have text content take up 1/3 and an image take up 2/3 at any width that I make the frame. Grid works right for the width, but the height of the parent frame needs to get taller as my text content wraps - please. Also, let me edit the number of rows/columns of the grid directly on the frame in the canvas.
Add ‘hug’ to the rows. it’s basically the one thing that is needed for this to be useful. I want to make a grid frame with 1 row and 3 columns and have text content take up 1/3 and an image take up 2/3 at any width that I make the frame. Grid works right for the width, but the height of the parent frame needs to get taller as my text content wraps - please. Also, let me edit the number of rows/columns of the grid directly on the frame in the canvas.
I feel like hug for columns is needed as well, per this great table example from @Smith_Samuel_D
@Thomas Reem Given we can’t reply to your posts about sharing feedback, perhaps I can draw your attention to this thread?
In particular, this seems to be falling short of user needs:
Fixed track sizing: Control over width and height of columns or rows.
Most layouts these days must NOT be fixed, but be able to adapt and respond to differing contexts, not just around the parent container, but within it. Being able to apply Hug for columns and widths whereby the contents of either/both are used to define the width/height of the column/row is essentially for content that must respond to reductions or increased in available screen real estate.
Is there a reason why this was not included? Is there an intent to include this in future feature releases? How can we best present this case and have it looked at?
Agree with “Inability to select the elements in a row/column all at once”. Its very limited in way to move things around other then selection. I would also like the ability to add a column/row to the left/right/above/below the selected.
I have also noticed sluggish performance in certain use cases as I push the limits (I have 100 columns) to create a 2 year roadmap.
All that said I am thankful still to have a grid :)
I’d add: the fact that I cannot bind the gap between columns and row to a variable makes literally no sense, since I can do it for autolayout’s gap.
Would also be nice to define an alignment for the grid. This would cater for scenarios where there are an uneven number of cards in a grid and we don’t want them to be left aligned.
I would love to be able to specify the directionality of a grid. When I press command + D to duplicate a cell, I want to be able to specify if that new duplicated element should be created to the right or below.
This is especially useful when designing spreadsheet/table like interfaces where there are column headers.
Of course they could have just done this that was requested more than 2 years ago
I don’t know why Figma even asks for feedback. They just do an underbaked feature and make that overly complex. All we need is proper Flex support really
OMG, this.
Why go to great lengths to create a NEW model of grids when: a) Flex Grids is an established standard b) we probably need to convert Figma designs to CSS anyway, so this would bring us closer to code alignment.
I struggle with tables in Figma daily (row-wise? column-wise?) and had really hoped that the new Grid feature would help there, but absolutely not. It took me 3 minutes of experimentation to realize how limited this feature is and another 30 seconds to find this post. Glad the userbase is in alignment, even if Figma product management isn’t.
I can’t believe they made this a big part of their announcement and then delivered something this underwhelming and basically useless. It’s not even beta quality.
I’ve been bugging the Figma folks for literally years to implement grid / flex tools that follow CSS layout standards.
Grid and Flexbox! How hard is that? Just something that follows those rules and implements their attributes in a GUI. Webflow has had these for a ling time.
And actual tables. Separate from but related to grids. Every Figma designer who works on enterprise apps has to design data tables, all day long. There are decades-old HTML elements and CSS attributes for these, yet still, we have to cobble together columns and rows out of nested frames.
Those of us who worked in print had to do similar contortions in Quark XPress - literally a maze of tab stops and 1pt-wide, 1000pt-tall underlines to make borders - and we switched to InDesign en massebecause it had actually useful table design tools, which persist to this day.
How many more years do we have to wait for these basic, basic features? While Figma takes on Illustrator with drawing tools, are they forgetting who their core userbase is?
Glad I found a larger forum post about this. I think everyone agrees that their grids implementation is severely underbaked.
I made an account to say the same things...Lack of any hugs , lack of ability to keyboard up and down PX widths on rows or columns to at least manually hit the largest internal components margin, lack of ability to use variables to add or remove a row / column on a prototype (think wanting to add a row to a table).
I was really hoping this was going to change my situationship with tables.
I made an account to say the same things...Lack of any hugs , lack of ability to keyboard up and down PX widths on rows or columns to at least manually hit the largest internal components margin, lack of ability to use variables to add or remove a row / column on a prototype (think wanting to add a row to a table).
I was really hoping this was going to change my situationship with tables.
I second the lack of using variables is a an oversight as well as the adding and removing of rows and having it actually adjust the frame size itself.
Inability to ‘hug’ contents
Both rows and grids themselves are unable to resize themselves to match their contents (‘Hug”).
Row heights must be either “Auto” (1fr) or a fixed height, meaning that if you want your rows to be sized per their elements, you’ve now manually defined each row height in px (not even a variable value), and instead of getting a clean CSS output, now you have however many rows defined in exact values, destroying any chance of scalability.
This alone makes this feature nearly useless to me.
“Hug?” ← This was LITERALLY the first thing I said during the deep dive when they hovered over a row to change it from AUTO to a fixed size.
I might be living in a dream world, but what if it all worked more like CSS? Relative units anyone? Or at the least (since we now have a grid with columns) being able to define padding for child elements by columns?
Within five minutes of playing with grid as it is now, I don’t see this really solving the need for nested autolayout containers to control spacing on page layouts, especially with full width background graphics/colors. I was starting to suspect it wouldn’t when virtually every grid demo was a photo gallery or card grid. Fine for that, but not flexible enough for page structure.
I will try to remain cautiously hopeful since it’s just beta right now.
+1 to hug for rows. I actually can’t use grid in my designs without it
Although op could’ve been a bit more polite in saying it
The “ Cannot remove row from a grid when it has content’ point is the first thing that annoyed me when I tried the feature out. Auto layout has always been flexible, this makes it look bugged
Grid Beta - Design and Sites Beta.
The new Grid layout needs some updates in order to be a great layout tool.
Ability to place multiple elements in the same cell, no absolute positioning, no parent frame hack..
Example: show loading on a button that is display grid. The text opacity changes and the spinner then shows up. This allows the button to stay the same size.
Then allow changing the z-index of the elements inside a cell.
Allow specifying cols and row sizes:
Auto.
Hard coded value.
minmax().
min-content.
max-content.
1fr 2fr ratios.
There should be support for variants in the gaps (both horizontal and vertical) but also in the col and row inputs, this allows the layout to change based on variant modes.
Example:
Mode for desktop: 12 cols and 6 rows.
Mode for tablet: 6 cols and 8 rows.
Mode for mobile: 3 cols and 9 rows.
Grid area?
Maybe allow to place content in named grid areas:
nav nav nav main . aside footer footer footer
Also maybe allow selecting the flow of content from top to bottom and left to right, just like in flex:
Canvas stacking - also applies to auto layout layout:
First on top (default behavior both for flex layout and grid layout) This is a pain point for me.
Last on top.
Additional:
Ability to align items inside the grid when the grid container is larger than the grid itself: when cols and/or rows are fixed width and height and there is some white space in the grid container. Specific behavior.
Maybe changing the flow of content, from col first to row first: `grid-auto-flow`.
This will make then building websites with Site better. Having the ability to specify exactly how the grid would behave.
Totally Agree, the previous auto layout was better, it allowed me to hug or fix content but i cannot do that anymore in the new UI and there’s no way i can go back to the old ui
Can we please just be able to move the toolbar back to the top?
Hey! So couple things that I think would make this great along with the other notes.
Please make it easier to resize the gaps of columns and the columns themselves. I think at the very least, it would be great to use the existing design pattern when you hover over a gap with two objects that aren’t connected via auto-layout (pink gap thing) and expand or close the gap
pink gap thing
Make it easy to add columns by having a (+) appear at the corners.
add column in corners
That’s all Thank you for the amazing new products and features 🫶
I’d like to emphasize that these complaints are not lodged at the developers who worked on this feature. I’m sure internally it was well known that this feature was not ready for the public, but Config 2025 demanded it be released early.
I’m glad to see the Figma team taking notice of this feedback by calling out this thread, and glad to see that some of my complaints are already planned for future release: https://x.com/disco_lu/status/1920959957794517071. Hopefully we can keep the good news coming and Grid can see its proper functionality in due time.
For now, this feature just slowed down my working projects. It's completely bugged, can't even make the same things I was able to do in the previous one auto layout feature. So sad.
Is it that hard to Figma team to make a flexgrid/flexbox like auto layout, really??
, lack of ability to keyboard up and down PX widths on rows or columns to at least manually hit the largest internal components margin, lack of ability to use variables to add or remove a row / column on a prototype (think wanting to add a row to a table).
