Figma, Your New Left-Hand Menu/Panel Is a Disaster – 7th Jan 2026

It takes up more space, solves problems that didn’t really exist, and in the process iwastes screen real estate. Everything this new navigation is trying to “simplify” could have been handled with keyboard shortcuts (for example, Alt + 1–4). Power users already rely on shortcuts.

But even if you could argue it is useful to someone, if you don’t need it, you can’t choose to hide it! You can only hide the entire left panel. So you’re forced to permanently give up a chunk of your canvas for something that could have been much smaller, icon-based, or simply optional. The padding is huge, the icons are oversized, and it feels unnecessarily bulky.

Figma keeps saying it’s “growing” and becoming more “approachable,” and the messaging frames this added complexity as a positive because it supposedly comes with simplifications. But in reality, this feels like the opposite.

The full-screen variable panel blocks access to the artboard, making it impossible to directly copy color values into variables.What a terrible design.

The last two major UI updates don’t fill you with confidence for any other changes to the UI. 

As said above, completely pointless and takes up space. 

The only positive is that it’s easier to find the variable button, but we also don’t need it full screen. I get more and more frustrated by the day in response to Figma’s constant messing about with the UI.

Are you guys working on Adobe XD for the design of Figma’s UI, because if Figma’s designers are working on Figma for the design of Figma, they will face this issue.

Remove it now...

You can minimize it

We need a way to hide the distracting new* "Navigation Bar." It’s distracting, takes up valuable screen real estate, only uses about 10% of its space - the other 90% is absolutely wasted empty pixels. I mean, really?  It provides nothing that isn’t already available in menus or keyboard shortcuts. 

This is such a bafflingly poor UX change, and in a sea of improvements/features/fixes that could’ve been prioritized in the product.. why this? Why.

It's terrible and is it just me or has the same update removed the lock / hide hover icons from the layers list?

I can lock things with the keyboard shortcut (someone would reply telling me this) but you can’t see when a layer is locked….there is no icon.

amazing how an industry-leading UI/UX tool can fail to understand such basic UX concepts and can’t even provide the option to hide this annoying panel 😁

Totally agree, that was not very user-focused development.

Another fail that comes with it, that you do not see if there are library updates when working in the “File” tab. You have to check the “Assets” tab to see if there are updates … 🙄

This still works for me. But seems like updates bring in all kind of bugs, depending on the user.

As the previous comment, assets are at the top, but asset updates (library) are at the bottom?!?!?!?!

FIGMAAAA!! 

PLEASE DO NOT ROLL THIS OUT IN PRODUCTION VERSION!!!

Why are you trading already SO SCARSE and precious horizontal view space for 1. controls that were never a problem + 2. WASTED EMPTY SPACE.
 

PLEASE DO NOT ROLL THIS OUT IN PRODUCTION VERSION!!!

PLEASE DO NOT ROLL THIS OUT IN PRODUCTION VERSION!!!
​​​​​​​
PLEASE DO NOT ROLL THIS OUT IN PRODUCTION VERSION!!!

This change actively makes professional work worse.

A permanently visible left panel that eats ~60px of horizontal space is not “navigation improvement”, it’s a regression. Canvas space is the single most valuable resource in Figma, especially on laptops. Taking it away for rarely used actions is a bad trade-off.

Most of these items were already accessible via shortcuts or contextual panels. Forcing them into a persistent UI element increases visual noise, reduces focus, and slows down experienced users — the exact opposite of what a mature design tool should do.

This feels like an interface designed for onboarding and demos, not for people who spend 6–10 hours a day inside the editor. Please reconsider or make this panel fully optional by default, not just collapsible.

Strongly supporting rolling this change back or giving users real control over it.

It would be cool to have a final concept, that than puts all Designs and Settings in the sidebar. And to have a good separation also put the Prototyping in the mode-bar.

But now, things are still everywhere.

With the new sticky nav bar on the left, somehow when I open one of the pages, Figma redirects me to the empty portion of the page, not where the actual stuff is. 

I have to search a word to get to my designs.

​@Sushmita Deb : Hit shift-1 on Mac to zoom and show all elements on that page.

Absolutely appalling UX! Was it done by AI? 

a) The side menu doesn't seem to be attached to the open file, so I never think to look there for the search
b) I cant close or minimise the damn thing when search is open. I try deleting the text search text.... and there is no way to clear the field quickly you have to delete each letter at a time which makes the screen focus jump around the page like frog in a blender. So you have to click back to file to be able to minimise it.
c) Try to minimise the whole thing it goes into a pill form instead of sliding left as expected, then you have to remember it’s done that to find it again
d) Zero consistency with the buttons - Why does the F open a dropdown but variables change the whole damn screen?
 

I would like to share a small UI suggestion regarding the desktop interface layout.

I noticed that the width of the "Home" tab (top-left) does not match the width of the left sidebar/panel below it. This creates a slight visual misalignment in the grid structure.

It would be much more visually consistent if the Home tab's width were aligned perfectly with the sidebar width underneath. I have attached a screenshot to illustrate the area I am referring to.

…. and get us the  49px strip back ?

How to close the newly released sidebar

This is one of the first time’s I’ve audibly said “eugh...” to one of Figma’s UI updates. Give me back my canvas space, hoping this is just an AB test.

This change feels bad, man :(