Skip to main content
Roberto
Apr 16, 2021 8:13 AM UTC

Display scroll bar in prototype preview mode

There’s no visible scrollbar in Figma prototyping mode. Yesterday we’re having user testings and once again this same topic popped out. Some of the users didn’t thought that they could scroll prototype because scrollbar wasn’t visible. One of the user was using laptop’s touchpad and he wasn’t able to scroll with only using touchpad. Guiding user how to use prototype during test can harm testing situations. Atleast it’s sure that if user thought that he can’t scroll it leads to biased feedback about product.

If there’s some reason not to have scrollbar it could be atleast optional feature that designer could turn visible scrollbar on from options.

It’s not only who has came across with this weakness in Figma. Here’s old Spectrum thread about same topic but Figma hasn’t done anything for this yet and I hope this get more attention here.

124 replies

Jul 20, 2024 6:56 AM UTC

Scrollbar is just another thing on the list of the things Figma dev team should be focusing on instead of introducing another half-baked feature that nobody asked for.

It’s frustrating honestly.

Jul 23, 2024 2:19 PM UTC

Why is this still not possible? This is crucial for usability tests…

Jul 25, 2024 1:38 PM UTC

Not just for testing older people that only navigate with a scrollbar as the initiator of this post seems to imply - it is an indicator to see that there is a scrollable area for all desktop devices (but please add the option to just show it when hovering a scrollable area, as it is common these days).

Jul 30, 2024 10:22 AM UTC

please add this function

Aug 5, 2024 1:34 PM UTC

+1 to this

just started usability studies with a Figma prototype for the first time and most of my participants are not realising that they can scroll.

Philipp_Kornfeld
Aug 19, 2024 4:47 AM UTC

Hi everyone,

I’m pretty new to Figma and, like many of you, encountered an issue I couldn’t find a solution for in the YouTube tutorials I watched. After experimenting a bit, I discovered a method to imitate a scroll bar, even though it doesn’t have any actual functionality.

What I did was create a scroll bar inside the scrolling frame. The long bar scrolls with the parent frame, while the thumb remains fixed in place.

Hope this help someone.
FYI I’m using a Mac, and don’t know too much about Windows.

KellyK
Active Member
Sep 10, 2024 9:13 PM UTC

I have once again hit a wall with prototyping… I need a scrolling div within a page that itself scrolls, which is technically possible, but not with a visible scrollbar. It really needs a visible scrollbar to indicate that it can scroll.

I don’t (and never will) have the bandwidth to build native UI elements like that myself, nor do I want to figure out how to integrate and troubleshoot a custom scrollbar component built by someone in the community. I would love to be able to do all my design and prototyping in Figma, but we really still can’t move off of Axure because of this. Please we need native support for scrollbars!

Vincent_Lo
New Member
Sep 11, 2024 5:44 PM UTC

Here’s a user testing “workaround”. I’ve found what works for me is just putting a static fake scrollbar in the mockup. In almost all cases, my participants have scrolled naturally when seeing the fake scroll bar and didn’t question why the position indicator was not matching the scroll position.

Foia_Dan
Oct 11, 2024 12:21 PM UTC

Bumping this too, it’s a must for user testing.

Jilly_Pfifferling
Oct 27, 2024 11:49 PM UTC

Just bumping this once more! Its a must.