Figma, Your New Left-Hand Menu/Panel Is a Disaster – 7th Jan 2026
This update is genuinely one of the most frustrating UX changes I’ve experienced in a professional design tool 😡 😡 😡
The new left-hand navigation panel permanently steals ~60px of horizontal space on small screens, which is completely unacceptable. That space is my primary working area — the canvas. I am literally losing room to do my job so a panel can sit there doing nothing most of the time.
Yes, Variables, Files, Assets, Find, and Library are important.
No — they are NOT minute-to-minute actions.
They do not deserve permanent, always-visible real estate. This panel is idle 90% of the time, yet it constantly punishes my workflow.
On smaller displays, this feels especially hostile. Instead of prioritising the canvas (the entire reason Figma exists), the UI forces a bulky navigation column that adds zero value moment-to-moment and actively makes precision design harder.
This change feels like it was designed for:
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Large monitors only
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Product demos
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Feature discoverability
…not for actual day-to-day designers working fast, zoomed in, and space-constrained.
What makes this worse
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There is no way to fully hide or disable this panel
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Collapsing all UI is a blunt workaround, not a solution
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There is no respect for screen size or user preference
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The previous solution worked better and did not need fixing
The two solutions that would actually fix this
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Remove this panel entirely and revert to the previous UI behaviour
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At an absolute minimum: let users completely hide this panel permanently
Not temporarily.
Not “collapse everything”.
Not keyboard gymnastics.
A simple, explicit option to turn it OFF.
Right now, this feels forced, wasteful of space, and completely misaligned with how professionals actually use Figma. Please prioritise the canvas again — it is the core of the product, not an accessory.