[LAUNCHED] All plans should offer more than 4 variable modes

I’ve found a dumb way that you can use aliases to string together modes from different collections. It can work for some situations but not all.

For example I just used it to have three main themes in one collection for controlling background and foreground color, while another collection controls 4 accent colors. If I had more than these in my existing design system I could potentially use more collections. I wouldn’t be doing this nonsense if I just had unlimited modes.

It was inevitable

Hey @dvaliao any feedback from product? Is this a permanent decision?
This limitation is explicitly and AGRESSIVELY anti-user.

Hi @Hoby-Van-Hoose , thanks for this. I’m trying to do something similar. Can you please a bit detailed example of how you’re using aliases to stitch modes from different collections?

Agree. I primarily work as a consultant. Why shouldn’t I be able to utilise the power and flexibility of variables for, say, translating my designs into 4+ languages for checking text lengths on my designs before being penalised? The same goes for some of my clients, who only consist of me as a UX designer and 3-4 developers. This smells of easy moneymaking.

Completely agree here. I’ve completely given up using variables for now because it’s simply not scalable in our setting. This limit thwarts the design capabilities of the tool, and if this approach becomes a pattern, Figma is setting up a very nice ground for a new, more accessible tool to take over. Please do not make the same mistakes others have made in the past.

Hi @Aniket_Bhadane in the example I mentioned, I have:

1. Colors collection. Hex values, named for purpose.
2. Themes collection. 3 themes (modes) featuring different background colors. This contains a set of accent colors aliased to different base colors according to the background.
3. Accents collection. 1 accent “color” in 4 modes, which are aliases of the accent aliases in the themes collection.

So then for accent colors I want to change according to variables, I set their color to the Accent color. Then for instances or their containers, I set their modes to the Theme and Accent I want for that particular location.

If I need more than 4 accents I could do a couple things, neither of which are ideal:

• Add more colors to the themes and make an accents-secondary collection with modes that alias those additional theme colors. If you want to be able to choose one accent color and be able to switch between primary and secondary sets, you need to create ANOTHER collection that has the primary and secondary colors as modes. I did this already for a set of pattern colors that I needed 3 for primary and 4 for secondary. It’s not nice needing to set three different modes to get a color but it remains fully dynamic between both accent sets. You could have a total of 16 accent colors if you filled up all the possible modes this way.
• Add another theme mode where the accent colors are actually entirely different accent colors without their own name. This would allow you to double your available accent colors (or triple if you only had 2 themes to start with) but you’d have to keep track of what color they’re going to end up, outside of Figma Variables.

Please offer 12 modes for professional plan. It’s difficult to switch to variables if my small team can’t accommodate all themes and languages into it.

+1, why is there a limit at all? we’re already PAYING for prof. doesn’t make sense for our small team to upgrade to enterprise for this feature alone.

Adding to the pile here because I spent way to much time trying to find a workaround to this limitation

➡️ Some of the basic usecases shared by Figma for variables modes are for products of an e-commerce and for translation.

• Both usecases are common for solo designer and small team
• Both usecase makes no sense with just 4 modes

If I want to use variable modes, I need to inform my client that something as simple as adding an item to a list it will increase Figma licence cost by 5000$.

It’s a very akward conversation.