Allow us to dock/move the new UI3 toolbar

Stubborn. Let’s face it, if they put the toolbar back to the top, they might as well use that space for component sets too, which was quite handy. Then one has to ask, what was the point in changing it at all 🤷🏼‍♂️

Assuming that a great many designers are using macs, this update is certainly a slap in the face for those users and certainly a conscious decision that the opinions of these (core, vocal) users are of minimal importance to where Figma want to be. 

finally starting to use UI3 since we are being forced to do so on the 30th… :( the worst part of UI3 is this bottom toolbar.. most of the time on a duel screen setup my laptop monitor covers this bottom part where i dont even see the toolbar when placed on the bottom… please allow use to configure position or just move it up to its original position where its actaully more usable. 

The UI3 floating bar makes no sense at the bottom considering every other tool is near the top. The way it floats over our actual work makes it actively in the way now. I don’t think this is a case of users just needing to get used to it. It’s a legitimate inconvenience, and not even including an option to move it is frustrating, especially now that we won’t be able to roll back to a previous version of Figma.  

Moving and forcing the tool bar to the bottom of the screen is infuriating and for me makes no sense in terms of usability. 

When you have multiple files open in tabs in UI 2 all your tabs and then tools are all contained together at the top of the screen. Now you have split that relationship which means your focus and eye have to continually switch between the top and bottom of the canvas. 

I can’t believe we can’t customise this to be at the top OR stay in UI2 which is a much more effective UI layout. Why are you doing this?

I emailed this in as an accessibility issue. With my set up, having it at the bottom significantly slows down my work flow due to my screen size. My mouse is almost never at the bottom of my screen unless I need to sleep my computer or adjust the bottom right settings, which are not part of my Figma workflow. And I was told “Your suggestion has been forwarded to our product development team for review. While we can't guarantee implementation...”

Here is your own vision statement on your front page, Figma, (https://www.figma.com/about/)

“Our vision is to make design accessible to everyone.”

Everyone includes me. I am a person, and so are all of these people commenting. You have made no indication that there is an option to move the toolbar to the top at this April 30th forced update, even though this issue has been brought up to you for nine months.

“The best way is to design together.” (https://www.figma.com/about/)
 

I agree. I am a User Experience and User Interface designer. The best designs, the best teams, they see and include everyone, because everyone has something to bring to the table. By your own interface design, you are excluding me and many other people, people with comments on here and who haven’t commented at all, so many other threads merged into this one, making our experience harder with no option to accommodate our needs that are not addressed with such a wide, spread out, non-customizable interface.

Here’s the other thing. People have already fixed your problem with a bit of code. A bit of code is all it takes to move the toolbar up to the top of the screen and help me and these other people who are asking for your help to give them an accessible experience. Better than just moving it, make it an option. Add a menu option to “View.” “Toolbar at Bottom” “Toolbar at Top.” You can keep the ability to have that toolbar at the bottom. Just make an option to allow it to be at the top as well.

If you truly

“...look forward to a future where design is even more: collaborative, borderless, transparent, community-driven, open-sourced…,” (https://www.figma.com/about/)

then don’t ignore your community and exclude groups of users by their needs.

By the looks of the comments, many people do not feel reassured. This issue has no demonstrated evidence that it’s being taken seriously, or addressed in a respectful and timely manner. It’s not transparent how any of our concerns will actually be taken care of before April 30th. 

This is incredibly disappointing to watch Figma, one of the biggest UI design softwares, ignore and refuse to act on accessibility issues brought up by its own user base. The web needs to be more accessible, how does it look for a such a major design software to be less accessible and accommodating? 

Please let us move the tool bar from the bottom. It gets in the way of my work and it’s really annoying. I see that people have been asking this for 9 months and Figma has not been responsive to this. Please listen to what your users are asking for. Most applications allow us to move these tool and palettes.

Yeah it’s really not ideal. The design/usability intent isn’t really clear to me—as to why it needs to be floating at all. But if it must be structured this way, it really should be possible to set the element to vertical orientation, preferably allowing it to be docked or embedded at the top as it was before also.

What I don’t understand is why after 9 mos of complaints they haven’t done anything. Also, hiding tools/design options on the right so you have to click to see it every time you want to use it isn’t helpful at all. I really wonder how this was tested before thy rolled it out. So tired of applications making changes for the sake of change rather than testing to see if it really improves the user experience.

Just adding my voice to all the others saying this ‘floating’ tool bar is an annoyance. Everything I could say about it has already been said, but thought I would chime in anyway….

I don’t find the bottom bar usefull at all. Please give me the alternative to hide it, collapse it or move it around to take it out of my screen space. It is very difficult to work this way and I cant believe that even after houndreds of people have told you and ask you the same, you still chose to force the new UI on everyone. 

It all feels like you trying very hard for everyone to use your new AI features, no thank you.

All you have achieve is to worsen your app and my work flow. 
Let me go back to UI2.

I can’t say anything that hasn’t been said here already, but yeah it’s distracting me from my work (it’s like the iphone ‘notch’ … it ruins the framing and is so visually prominent it can’t be ignored, whereas when it’s in with the regular UI areas you can at least focus on the canvas OR the UI). Except I got used to the iphone notch but I can’t seem to get used to this, it’s just too distracting and inconvenient.

It’s a basic principle of visual hierarchy that the eye goes to the most visually prominent thing in any design first (and then the second, third etc)  – guess what’s become THE most visually prominent thing in my canvas now? You guessed it, a big incredibly prominent black notch that is constantly distracting me and anyone I’m presenting to

… also it’s super inefficient, a real pain placed in the furthest location away from all the other UI especially if you have a big screen (which many designers do) 

…I also trigger the mac’s bottom app launcher bar CONSTANTLY which is driving me nuts 

has anyone found a way to hide it or move it without also toggling off the rest of the UI? Anyone know of good plugins that override this? 

 

I’ve made instructions with some solutions ↓

Given that you could pin the toolbar at the top in previous releases I’m surprised it’s not available in this release. Toolbars at the top have been an industry UI standard since Mac 7.4 and Windows 3.1 and people like me have been working top down for thirty years. Having it at the bottom is counter intuitive, really screws with my workflow and slows me down quite a bit. In short, it’s infuriatingly frustrating and I don’t want to relearn for a single application as it will throw me off in others. 

Please consider bringing moving it back as an option in near future releases. 

PLEASE JUST PUT THIS ANNOYING TOOLBAR AT THE TOP!!!! Is anyone at Figma actually listening? This is one of the worst design decisions. It’s bad enough having to be forced to UI3 at it is. 

​@dvaliao At least give us the option to dock it? Here’s an example of it docked at the top, but it could be docked anywhere. 
 

The floating bar on the canvas is clearly not a popular change, and for good reason because it gets in the way of elements in the canvas. There is already a way to hide the UI so this floating toolbar add little value. 
 

I also agree that the change is unnecessary and it just has made using Figma so much more annoying for me since they forced us to switch. However, I did find a bit of a solution that works for me on the web version of Figma. If you use a CSS injection extension, you can edit the CSS of the website to move the toolbar to the top. I hope they actually update it themselves, but that is seeming unlikely after 9 months which is incredibly annoying.

Anyway, here’s what you would could put in for that to work:
.positioned_design_toolbelt--root--INYO4 {
bottom: auto;
top: 12px;
}

I refused to update to the new UI *only* because of this toolbar placement. Now I’m forced to use the new update.

Allowing us to move it is a simple fix.

Please.

I also didn’t move across to the new UI because of this. It seems rather silly that we have been begging for this simple change and they’ve now forced us to move to the new UI. Every other tool similar to this has this ability and it also seems a little ludicrous that this tool used for designing user experiences and user interfaces has such a poor user experience

Thanks ​@CAEDMON - what CSS extension works for you?

​@dvaliao Any official response to this? I have to agree with the Figma designers above.  I used to enjoy using Figma but this toolbar is totally ruining the experience and is always in the way. At the very least let us dock it back (see mockup above). It’s not a hard change, and will be a welcome change. 

Thank you. 

I feel you 100%. One of the key things to learn as a designer is not getting attached to design decisions, especially poor design decisions. I’m sure the Figma design team would agree with this.

Typically, product release decisions ultimately fall on one person in the product team and it’s not necessarily someone on the Design Team (it’s often the product manager or product owner).

Let’s hope they do the right thing. 

​@SLT-UX I actually use Arc browser which has it built in with the boosts feature, but for any other browser, just search for any CSS injection extension and that should work. I think one I’ve seen before is just called CSS Inject and it’s for Chrome browsers on the web store.

​@dvaliao  do you have an official response now please? This post has had over 6000 views - it’s clearly an issue for users.

+1 to
 

Everything everyone else said
PLEASE
and thank you