Folders: I'm missing Folder contents preview/thumbnails

Yeah, this sucks. I relied on visual navigation to know what I’m looking for at-a-glance :(

Hey ​@Adelina3  ​@Will Weaver 👋 Thanks for the feedback. I’ll share this with the team that owns Folders. Keep the feedback coming 🙌 — Jaycee

Hello!

We are also unpleasantly surprised with the new update, the thumbnails helped so much to locate the right project/ folder. Now they all look the same and one needs to read through them all to find the correct one. Needless to say, also remember what was the name of the folder. Please, bring back thumbnails - Figma is for visual minds 😥

Best Regards

Elizabete 

The new way of displaying project folders—showing only the names—is really inconvenient. It used to be easy to spot the right project immediately thanks to the preview image. Now, you have to read the name of every single folder to find the one you need. Have they considered how practical this actually is when there are a lot of folders? You have to go through the entire list just to locate the right one. Plus, I have to recall which projects are in which folder. It’s inconvenient. It takes too long. And it’s incredibly annoying.⠀At least give users the option to choose the display mode—so they can select whether to show folders with just their names or with previews, as before.

I ran into this update today, too. There are so many project folders, and now I have to read the name of each one to find the right one, instead of just spotting the necessary preview image right away. Plus, I have to remember which project is where and what it's named.

The new folder-style project view is really inconvenient! Searching for a project by folder name is slow and cumbersome. Compared to the previous preview view, it takes much more time and is just frustrating. Please bring back project previews — they were so much more convenient!

I agree. Or at least let users choose the display mode they prefer. It should be possible to add a setting for selecting the folder view.

Totally agree, a view switcher would solve the problem.

Hey ​@Darya Kozlova  ​@maleneva I merged two topics since they both have new Folder-based feedback. Please keep it coming. Thank you! — Jaycee 

Problem:
With the switch from Projects to Folders (and the new ability to nest folders), we have lost the ability to see the thumbnail previews of files nested inside a folder. Folders now just display a generic folder icon in both grid and list view, with no visual indication of what's inside.

Our folder view is now a wall of identical, generic icons and text with zero visual differentiation. Previously, thumbnail previews let us scan and recognize folders at a glance. Now we have to take the time to scroll and read through all of the folder names, and navigate in and out of folders to figure out what's inside, which slows down everyday navigation considerably. This is a major UX downgrade.
 

This is a significant workflow regression for Professional teams like ours. We're forced to maintain a large number of separate folders/projects because Figma doesn't allow different access permissions on individual files or subfolders nested within a parent folder — the only way to control access is to keep things in many separate top-level folders. Since we're required to use many separate folders to work around the lack of individual access permission controls, visual differentiation between folders is essential for quickly finding the right one. Removing thumbnail previews has made an already folder-heavy workflow noticeably harder to navigate.

Suggestion:
Add the option to view or hide thumbnail previews of nested file contents to/by the view as grid or list segmented control.