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Question

So many things in beta, broken or half baked in Figma Design. What's up?

  • May 6, 2026
  • 3 replies
  • 36 views
Ben_Smeets

I was looking at the release notes to double check my gut feeling that Figma itself has not been getting a lot of love lately. For my personal uses that has been the case. Only vague AI related things, which might be fine but makes me feel a lot of things are left behind. The trigger for posting this was looking at “Code Connect” after reading about a “bug” in Slots that seemed to be “intended behavior” (which is weird). This feature coming from 2024 (!) seems to be in Beta still (according to the blog post). The Github feels completely abandoned. 

This reminded me of things like branches (total abandonement), Percentage widths, Slots that feel half baked. The whole grid thing that seems to fizz out. New UI that was not a big success (I am still scanning everytime I select a diffferent layer where things are after all these years). Still not seeing the new App layout with the buttons on the left side (my team does, not me). Etc. Etc.

I was just curious, I am getting the same kind of feeling as I did with Sketch when it started to ignore the design base. Is it just me? Or am I overreacting? Figma is expensive stuff. Would be great for it to get some attention to finish things at least. (Again, I might be missing the plot here, so take it with a grain of salt).

    3 replies

    AlicePackard

    A lot of things you listed (eg percent as a unit of measurement) are on my wishlist too. I've got very similar gripes about the workflow for publishing assets from a library file. But one thing that keeps me hopeful is remembering things like spellcheck… I don't think the Design tool had it until 2022! For years before then folks (myself included) would say “spellcheck is table stakes stuff, what are they thinking!?”

    It's their gamble to make, where they choose to invest effort, and how that'll either cost or earn the goodwill among paying customers like us.

    Something else to keep in mind is we’re getting very close to this year’s Config. I expect to see a lot more bugs and quirks in the Design tool leading up to whatever big announcements they might make during day 1’s keynote. So any oddities between now and then might be evidence of the team cooking stuff that won't be formally announced for a while!

    I’d love to hear more about what you'd like to see improved with branches!

    I write about building excellent Figma components on my blog: https://alicepackarddesign.com/blog
      Ben_Smeets
      • Ben_Smeets
      • Author
      • Active Member
      • May 7, 2026

      Good point(s), I’m hoping with you :)

      Re: Branches, it might be my ignorance, but as long as they don’t support branches that keep the design files and it’s libraries in sync (meaning, all of them are part of the branch, not just one of them), it seems completely pointless to me. How can anybody use it without that?

        AlicePackard

        Ah like having to accept changes from a library in both the main file AND a branch? 

        I write about building excellent Figma components on my blog: https://alicepackarddesign.com/blog
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