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Question

Ability to add/remove/re-order items in an auto-layout component

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
April 8, 2024
25 replies
2252 views

This is a reference to a topic that was closed without resolution:

I can’t express how frustrating it is when a designer has to detach one of your components simply to add a tab in-between existing tabs or a dropdown option above existing ones.

When I build a component I shouldn’t have to create 10 hidden layers as placeholders to make sure that the component works for a design with 2 dropdown options or 10 options. I should be able to include 1-2 items in the component and let designers add/remove more from there.

Lack or re-ordering capability combined with the lack of add/remove capability for items in an auto-layout component means our components continue to get detached shortly after use. It defeats the purpose of maintaining a component library. It becomes a template library instead.

Michael_Wandelmaier

New Member

Couldn’t agree more. This is the single biggest blocker to using Figma design systems for larger, more complex components and patterns.

Dorothy Ryan

New Member

Can we vote this up? This is a really annoying limitation of components.

Yezgi_BahaAuthor

New Member

@Figma_Team any inputs?

leeharrisonmellor

New Member

This is a really annoying aspect of Figma. It’s a major blocker for complex components. For example, I have an RTE organism that sits within several components. The RTE contains rows of different heading/type/bullet/list styles that the designers need to be able to change the order of to build designs/prototypes. Having to detach the components creates havoc when you then try and create variations of the designs, relying on variables to resize/recolour the components.

How do other users deal with this headache?

Chris_Gatland

New Participant

Agreed 100%. I frequently end up having to detach my own instances because the alternative would take too much repetitive editing.

Imagine the scenario - you have a 7 item menu and you realise you need to add a new item at the top. To achieve this, you either need to detach and hack the instance or you have to rewrite all of the text strings and re-assign icons to every list item (assuming you even have another dummy item at the bottom to unhide).

I pretty often need to re-order menu items between design concept and final spec as the product evolves. It should be a trivial task.

Gerlof

New Member

This would be so great to have

Lee Costic

New Member

This is a reference to a topic that was closed without resolution:

Reorder objects in an autolayout component instance. Allow for order overrides Share an idea

Reorder objects in an autolayout component instance. Allow for order overrides. Allow users to reorder (drag or arrow) objects inside a component instance that has auto-layout on it. Especially useful for components that have repeated elements, such as a dropdown menu or a group of form inputs, navigation. This would be much quicker than manually changing each of the elements in-between where the current element is and where the new position is. Or for users that don’t have patience and break…

I can’t express how frustrating it is when a designer has to detach one of your components simply to add a tab in-between existing tabs or a dropdown option above existing ones.

When I build a component I shouldn’t have to create 10 hidden layers as placeholders to make sure that the component works for a design with 2 dropdown options or 10 options. I should be able to include 1-2 items in the component and let designers add/remove more from there.

Lack or re-ordering capability combined with the lack of add/remove capability for items in an auto-layout component means our components continue to get detached shortly after use. It defeats the purpose of maintaining a component library. It becomes a template library instead.

Agree with all comments here, I run into this at least once a week, very frustrating limitation. (I initially thought this was just a setting our component library architects had forgotten to enable, but no...it’s an actual Figma limitation!)

Thoughts on this @seni @dvaliao @Celine_ ?

Sebastian_Holzki

New Participant

Has there been any movement on that front? It’s a big limitation for design systems and using them

Kevin_Voller

New Member

+1 – This would be a great feature. In theory it could be implemented as a component property, controllable both in the canvas area and in the properties panel where it’d be reflected – drag and drop to reorder maybe?

Jessica12

New Member

Running into this problem right now in our design system. It would be so much better if I could just reorder in the Asset rather than breaking it to do so.

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