Definitely need more than 4, at least 10 - 20

This limitation makes absolutely zero sense. The number of variable modes required isn’t something that scales up proportionate to the size or structure of your design team, which makes this limitation feel completely arbitrary and blatantly opportunistic.

Have Adobe sent you sales consultants to come up with ridiculous ideas like this? Because it feels completely unthought-out and unlike something I’d expect Figma to do.

We were so excited to use modes to quickly update our entire prototype for usability testing. We were thrilled when we saw our participants’ names, balances, status tiers, etc. updating seamlessly and effortlessly across many pages and components… and then we saw the message RE 4 modes max. We’re lucky that we’re only running two sessions simultaneously so we can update the modes, but it adds extra time, effort, and stress.

We don’t need an enterprise account. We don’t need REST API integration. Our little design team just needs more than 4 modes.

I agree will all of the comments above. I am leading an Open Source Accessibility Theme Builder project and I am an individual designer with a professional account. I am trying to create color blind themes and there are 8 types of colorblindness, hence I need 9 modes - standard + the 8 colorblind modes… I want to enable all designer the opportunity to apply accessible themes/modes to their design, which means not only do I need access to more that 4 modes but everyone does. Please support this effort and help us reimagine what it means to create accessible experiences by opening up the number of mode available to all designer up to 10.

This is probably the most valuable comment here. Thanks for you efforts @Lise_Noble

Out of curiosity, what are the benefits of having a wide range of color blindness themes VS one theme that ensures designs meet WCAG contrast ratios?

@Travis 12 I have not come across a 10 color blind pallet in which each of the colors offers a contrast of 3.1:1 against white in light mode and 3.1:1 in dark mode. For charts and graphs you need to have a 3:1 contrast. I am working at developing accessible experiences in both light and dark modes. In addition, there are colors that kind of work for each of the types of color blindness but they are not optimised for each. I am working on a open source accessibility, accessibility theme builder, that is trying to re-imagine the way we build accessible experiences.

4 is not an arbitrary limit, it is carefully selected so that it is not possible to create library components that support 3 breakpoints and two color modes. Which is a common scenario. Its a business decision to force bigger organizatios into the most most expensive plan.

Zero intention of using Variable Modes with this limit. What a waste of a good feature, just sitting behind an obnoxiously high paywall.

Adding some more fuel to this request. I think there is plenty of justification in the above comments for not limiting modes for smaller teams. Is Figma really thinking that individual designers and small teams don’t: localize designs for more than 4 languages, create more than 4 different color schemes (or present more than 4 to a client before deciding on the one), design for only 4 device size breakpoints, or have more than 4 different font explorations? Those are just a few examples. Such an arbitrary limitation really keeps the feature from realizing its full potential, because small teams will NEVER pay for enterprise just to get more modes.

Hello,

Currently I am at the point where I need more than 4 Variable Modes for my designs.

I was looking for a billing plan to meet my needs and I found out that there is only an Entreprise mode (the most expensive) where you pass from 4 available modes directly to 40 !

There are a lot of other features that are appear in Entreprise that I personally don’t need at all (as well as in the Figma Organization mode for example).

Is there any way to get more variable modes for additional fee without passing to the Entreprise mode ? Command and pay for each +5 or +10 modes for example.

Has anyone experienced the same frustration ? @Figma_Moderation do you thing it is possible to propose something for such people as me ?

Thank you in advance !

Also adding to fuel.

Want to see this limit lifted as it’s hard to experiment on small projects with just 4 modes.

8 would be more fitting.

it is not possible to create library components that support 3 breakpoints and two color modes.

Hey @Karttunen_Juha, our variables team says that this is actually possible. Just be sure to put sizing/breakpoints into a separate collection (with mobile/desktop/tablet modes) from colors (light/dark mode).

Hey All, thank you for your continued feedback!

Our Variables team hears you. We will continue to follow this thread and take your feedback into future consideration. We fully intend to improve and polish the Variables experience with your feedback in mind.

To fuel up the conversation we also miss the opportunity to add more than 4 modes. Please please Figma reconsider this 🙂

I don’t think any limit makes sense. To me it’s like saying, “Yo Developers, here in this new programming language you can use 4 whole arrays per app. Awesome, right?”

Or for writers, 4 chapters per book.

Carpenters get 4 doors per building.

Musicians get 4 notes per song.

Lawyers get 4 sentences per argument.

Cooks get 4 ingredients per restaurant.

Stores can sell to 4 customers per day.

Cars can make 4 turns per trip.

etc.

We hear you and understand the frustration. We’ll pass this onto our team for consideration.

As a temporary workaround, you can try creating multiple files with 4 modes, but also keep in mind that you won’t be able to “mode swap” between the modes from different files.

Please note that this is not directed towards you personally @dvaliao and I really do appreciate your offer for a solution. But here is a message to pass along to the team…

“Temporary workaround” is a term we use when filling the gap while a feature is actively being perfected, improved, or fixed. Anyone working in the software space knows that these things can take time, and personally I have always been happy to wait for the Figma team as the work released is for the most part polished and bug-free.

In this case however, the feature as designed meets user expectation. The business model around said feature is what’s “broken”. Months after release there is still no word that this is ever set to change, so I feel “temporary” is a bit of a reach here.

Breaking down designs into multiple files adds the sort of maintenance overhead and complexity which modes was partly designed to solve.

Given that words matter, we should call this “temporary workaround” an “awkward and unecessary hack” designed to give paying customers (of all plans) the illusion of full access to a core feature which they expect to use along with all other core features.

Upgrading to Enterprise is also a bit hard to fathom when support for nested components and no support for conditionally setting a component state via a variable rule.

Just found out about this ridiculous limit. I was going to use variables to better align with the utility classes our devs use. For this particular project, I have a customer with 8 e-commerce stores that share a lot of design components but have different branding per store and more are coming. Guess I’ll have to keep using styles then, which is becoming very unpractical for this particular project 🙄.

What’s more surprising to me is the lack of a step-up for the organisation plan! I contract for a large organisation that doesn’t need any of the features that come with an enterprise plan besides more modes. How are you not offering more than 4 modes for a plan targeted at organisations? it’s massively limiting and makes switching from tools like Token Studio an impossibility. Modes are used in different ways for different companies, it’s not a linear scale depending on the size of the company, and this hurts designers’ ability to be creative with their design tokens.

I need to get on the bandwagon here as launching a highly sort after feature but then constraining it in such a way that your users have to significantly level up their licence for a plan that does not suit them to un-constrain said feature is quite bewildering.

Reading all the replies, what surprises me is that we aren’t asking for much and many of us in the thread would easily upgrade to organisation licence for more modes. Our studio were even willing to pay for Enterprise licenses for our two seats, however there is no budging on the minimum seat requirements.

If it’s all about money, which I hope it’s not, just doing some basic sums shows that there is easy money to be made by Figma, as well as responding to what’s important from their users.

159 have voted this up. Taking these 159 votes and upgrading those, as a minimum, to 1 organisational licence for 12 months would = $86.4k. Increase that to more than 1 licence and we are talking hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I find it very hard to understand why this feature would be released in such a way and would love to hear the rationale, apart from the obvious, behind it and would hope that Figma can come to the party and meet us in the middle.

$$$ Adobe comin for their investment $$$

$$$ Adobe comin for their investment $$$

For whatever it’s worth, Adobe’s planned acquisition of Figma hasn’t actually been completed yet (it remains caught up in various regulatory/antitrust investigations).

So this was 100% a Figma decision that maybe only feels like it rhymes with Adobe’s general approach to squeezing recurring revenue blood from their software monopoly stones.

I just discovered that there is a limit of 4 modes, and I’m quite disappointed. I’m currently retrieving various texts from a Google Sheet to complete the descriptions of a showcase featuring multiple works. These texts change depending on the mode, which is linked to a particular case. Unfortunately, this limitation is hindering me from achieving my desired results because I’m limited to only 4 modes. I hope that this restriction will be removed soon.

@Figma_Moderation @dvaliao

Some simple use cases to share with the variable team.

I can design a unique button size, and use sizes to make others sizes, so I don’t need to design the same component over and over again. Avatar component as well.

May you or someone from the team could come to this post and explain why did you guys made this this “cap” decision, and when this will be a definitive?

Best regards

While we are at it, add 2 modes to the Starter plan.

I cannot even try this feature without paying.

This is very different from the philosophy of Figma in the beginning, you could basically do anything in Pro and the pricing would scale with your team size.

Now we are also cutting features, to force people into paid, even before being able to try a feature. Adobe enshittification is already here.