It would be great if the professional plan offered more than 4 variable modes. Right now I want to set up a mode for each component size-- XS - XL, 5 sizes all together-- which puts me over the 4 limit for pro, but well under the 40 limit for enterprise, which is a quantity I will never need. And there’s no use case for enterprise at all for a team our size.
I think 10-12 modes for pro would be perfect to give small teams like mine room to grow before we reach the scale where an enterprise plan would be worth consideration.
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Giving this a bump as it’s STILL beyond frustrating. It’s been years now, and still only 4 modes for both Pro and Org plans? C’mon man, we don’t need more AI, we need tools that actually allow us to get our day to day things done easier...especially when we’re paying thousands more for Org upgrades.
The good news (all things considered) is that the Penpot team are hard at work changing their rendering engine to a WebAssembly based one, which means that its performance should be on par with Figma's. Once they release that new renderer, our team will be able to make the switch.
It's such a disappointment, we have all our projects in Figma, and our design team really enjoys it. But the unavailability (let's call it for what it is, 4 modes means it's useless) of variables is unfortunately a blocker for us. We are ready to give up on many useful features of Figma to be able to implement a proper Design System, using variables ("Design tokens" in Penpot)
Giving this a bump as it’s STILL beyond frustrating. It’s been years now, and still only 4 modes for both Pro and Org plans? C’mon man, we don’t need more AI, we need tools that actually allow us to get our day to day things done easier...especially when we’re paying thousands more for Org upgrades.
It‘s totally sad and infuriating.
For Figma to think that they can get away with this strategy in the long run…
They don‘t get communities. People will just leave sooner or later.
The good news (all things considered) is that the Penpot team are hard at work changing their rendering engine to a WebAssembly based one, which means that its performance should be on par with Figma's. Once they release that new renderer, our team will be able to make the switch.
It's such a disappointment, we have all our projects in Figma, and our design team really enjoys it. But the unavailability (let's call it for what it is, 4 modes means it's useless) of variables is unfortunately a blocker for us. We are ready to give up on many useful features of Figma to be able to implement a proper Design System, using variables ("Design tokens" in Penpot)
Penpot just released Variants! 🥳
Figma better start listening or they will wipe themselves out of the map.
this is looking so much better than the way Figma messed it up.
Please this is kinda ridiculous. Once Penpot supports variants and their new renderer I’m going to seriously consider switching our organisation. Hobbling one of your most powerful features with an artificial cap is beyond a joke.
We hear you and understand the frustration. We’ll pass this onto our team for consideration.
Any news? can we at least get an explanation for why there’s a seemingly arbitrary limit on such a simple feature? Will a higher mode cap crash servers?
Just stumbled upon this because my design requires more than 4 color modes, 90$ just to get more color modes? this is a massive joke
Just stumbled upon this because my design requires more than 4 color modes, 90$ just to get more color modes? this is a massive joke
For what it’s worth, I’ve stumbled on a hack of sorts, and I’ve built a component that will support 16 modes. I could support more in theory, but it’s messy. Essentially:
Create four, four-mode variable groups that are identical in structure. For example, I have sixteen ‘statuses’ that are in App statuses 1, App statuses 2, etc…
Mine use numbers for the mode titles, but you can use more memorable names.
Then create a primary variable group that links to the other variables in the four status groups...
Link your content to your main group’s variables...
Apply both the main group of variables to the component, along with the sub-groups...
You can then toggle between modes in the main group, which lets you select modes from each subgroup. For example, I can select “Statuses 3”, which lets me use App statuses 3 as the toggle.
It ain’t pretty, but it works!
Well, at least now we can easily expand the variable window easily - and just look at all that glorious whitespace.
4 modes on org is just a joke. Soooo frustrating to have to do tones of work arounds all the time...
I have the professional plan. 4 modes are not enough. Something like 12 modes or unlimited modes will work. please fix
@Celine_ @seni @djv @Tom Reem @y_toku
Subject: Urgent: Two Years of Silence on a Critical Feature - We Need More Than 4 Variable Modes!
To the Figma Team,
I am writing to express my extreme disappointment and frustration regarding the complete lack of action and communication on the long-standing feature request for more than four variable modes. It has been over two years since this was first raised by the community, and the continued silence from your end is frankly unacceptable.
The limitation of only four variable modes is a significant bottleneck for countless designers and teams. It's a daily point of friction that actively hinders our ability to build complex and scalable design systems within Figma. We propose a tiered approach that would be a significant improvement, for instance, allowing at least 10 variable modes for the Professional plan, 20 for the Organization plan, and 40 for the Enterprise plan. This isn't a niche request; it's a fundamental improvement that would remove a major roadblock for a massive portion of your user base.
We've seen Figma launch numerous new products and features in the meantime, which makes the inaction on this "small" but critical feature all the more baffling and frustrating. It gives the impression that you are out of touch with the real-world needs of your users and are prioritizing flashy new releases over addressing core usability issues.
We are not asking for a complete overhaul of your platform. We are asking for a crucial improvement that would have a massive positive impact on our daily work. We urge you to prioritize this feature request immediately and provide the community with a clear and definitive timeline for its implementation. The whole community is awaiting your response on this.
We need more than just radio silence. We need action. We need more variable modes, and we need them now.
Thank you.
@Celine_ @seni @djv @Tom Reem @y_toku
Subject: A Gentle Monday Reminder: We are Pleading for More Than 4 Variable Modes
Hello to the phenomenal Figma team,
This is just a very gentle Monday morning reminder about a feature request that has been a major pain point for a huge part of the community for years.
We know you are juggling countless priorities and performing miracles to advance the platform, and we are so grateful for that. It is precisely because you are so busy that we worry that long-standing requests like this one might get lost in the shuffle of new, exciting projects.
That's why I'm writing today. I just want to gently bring this back to the top of your minds. We are humbly and desperately begging you to please reconsider the limit of 4 variable modes. For anyone building scalable design systems, this limitation is a constant and significant bottleneck.
Please forgive my persistence, but this issue is so fundamental to so many workflows that I plan to post a gentle reminder here every Monday. My goal is only to be a small, consistent signal, hoping it reaches the right person at the right time.
We are pleading with you to please address this long-standing community request.
Thank you for your tireless work and for listening.
Totally agree! The jump from 4 to 40 modes is ridiculous. You can't even do basic component sizes (XS-XL) without hitting the limit. 4 modes works for simple light/dark themes but real design systems need way more flexibility.
A 10-12 mode tier would be perfect - enough for actual work but still leaves room to upsell Enterprise. Right now it feels like they're forcing teams into expensive plans just to build proper components ♂️
This. I have spent the past two hours looking for a workaround to this issue and frankly the whole architecture/limitations around tokens and variables is turning me off from Figma as a tool for our design system.
We’re a small company, I’m the only figma dev. Prof plan is perfect for us. Except for modes. As soon as penpot release their latest render engine, (and background blur!), we will be self hosting penpot and saying goodbye to what was the best app in its space. This is some adobe level en****ification and were you actually bought by Adobe I wouldn’t be surprised. But you weren’t, so this doesn’t make sense.
Just unlock the amount of available variable modes for paid plans completely…
It just feels so damn greedy right now and it makes me and my teams extremely frustrated!
Your pricing strategy can still be segmented in terms of other types of functionality.
More pressure. Totally unusable for centralised management of any accessible token system. There’s no reason to limit this! This “feature” is never going to make me upgrade and triple my figma costs.
♂️