Skip to main content
Aalok_Trivedi
January 29, 2021

Fr/Percent units for more control over auto layout content

  • January 29, 2021
  • 214 replies
  • 20235 views

Although I find the new autolayout UI extremely convoluted and overdesigned, the ‘hug/fill parent’ feature is great. However, It would be immensely helpful to have more control over how the elements fill the parent.

Currently, the only option is for the elements to fill the remaining space, but oftentimes, I need certain elements to take up a certain proportion.

Example: I need element-1 to take up 2fr (~66%) and the rest to take up 1fr (~33%). It would be a game-changer if we could use ‘fr’ units.

Framer does this beautifully and it’s vital for efficient, adaptive layout workflows:

    214 replies

    Jared_Rice
    June 29, 2023

    100% agree. I am so excited for these Figma updates, but I got a little bummed when I realized we couldn’t use percentages. A bulk of my day to day is designing UI for web based applications and so percentages are everywhere.

    Ben_Smeets
    Active Member
    July 5, 2023

    That is “showing” the % only, not setting them. Unfortunately.

    Tiffany10
    New Member
    July 7, 2023

    +1! this would be great for responsive forms

    Dennis_N
    Power Member
    July 13, 2023

    @JackieChui You asked for a concrete example… there we go:

    I would like to set the max-width to 100% of the parents frame to avoid elements like buttons to overflow. This would allow to combine hugging with the benefits of fill-container if the content would exceed. Especially if the component got resized.

    See:

    JackieChui
    Figmate
    Figmate
    July 14, 2023

    Thanks for the example!
    Will share it with the team.

    mattaningram
    New Participant
    July 18, 2023

    Percent based sizing is useful in general, not just for min/max width. It is one of the most common ways of sizing things when coding layouts. Relying on Fill width and pixel sizing just isn’t capable enough, especially when you want to handoff to devs and you want them to use percent based sizing.

    Maiken_van_Vliet
    New Member
    July 27, 2023

    I would also love to use percentages because of the way the auto layout wrap works. Because the min and max aren’t flexible, I now often have to use empty spacing layers to make sure everything wraps well. It would be way easier to way:

    • Min Width: 33%
    • Max Width: 50%

    Now I often have to recalculate for different screen sizes.

    July 30, 2023

    +1, please Figma!

    Bryan_Boone
    New Member
    August 17, 2023

    Agree. Like others here I work on a web app with cards, tables, and other UI containers and elements that would benefit from percentages in Figma. Now I often have to draw fixed width drawings and math out the percentages – at least the width and height box make for quick math – but it is still a lot of work, especially if they change up at breakpoints. I can use fill on an auto layout for easy halves, thirds, quarters and other even layouts, but I find myself just always using even divisions to make my life easier in Figma when I should probably split containers by uneven percentages like 60/40 or 70/30.

    Petr_Jandak
    New Member
    August 23, 2023

    I really don’t understand, how it is possible to have auto layout without the percentages. I mean, if we want to create truly responsive layouts, it’s simply impossible to do it with the absolute values (or simply assume, that all the widths should be equal). I was really surprised it wasn’t the part of the min/max and wrap update, it’s directly connected and not fully usefull without it.