I recently ran into a serious issue while working with different primitives in a large file.
It may be an edge case, but when it happens, it is something very difficult and time-consuming.
After renaming one primitive that was used across many layers, the file ended up containing several “missing variables” (which you can't find by searching). Some layers still referenced variables that were no longer visible or easy to find. The result was an inconsistent document where certain modes (for example Dark Mode) were still applied somewhere, but there was no clear way to locate them.
In a complex file with thousands of layers, this becomes extremely difficult to resolve. I eventually fixed it, but it required manually checking large parts of the document.
Right now, we can search for many things in the file (components, layers, text, etc.), but we cannot search for primitives and token that are applied to layers.
A feature that would help a lot:
Allow searching for primitives and token in the document.
For example:
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Search for a specific primitive or token name
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Find all layers using a certain primitive or token
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Locate primitives or token that belong to a different mode (e.g. Dark Mode while the document is in Light Mode)
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Identify broken or missing primitives or token references
This would make debugging variable systems much easier, especially in large design systems.
Has anyone else run into similar issues with this kind of stuff in large files? And would a primitives or token search be something the team at Figma might consider adding?
