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Ryan_Zec
Ryan_Zec
August 6, 2023

Make collection name searchable

  • August 6, 2023
  • 5 replies
  • 443 views

It seems really odd to make that the collection name for variable is not include when looking for variables:

figma

The reason that vertical-padding shows up is because in the description of the variable, I added button. This is at least a workaround to this issue but having to do that for each variable is annoying and easily forgettable

    5 replies

    Jeroen2
    Jeroen2
    Active Member
    February 6, 2024

    I feel the same way about this. Not being able to easily discover the name of the collection that the Variable is in, makes it harder to search for the correct Variable. The same happens with my developer coworkers: they get a JSON token file, based on Variables in Collections, but the collection name in the Figma spec (both in Design Mode and Dev Mode) is left out. Both for me as a designer and my coworkers as developers this is a bit of a pain.

    I think that instead of path/to/variable it is an easy addition to add the collection name to the display of the name of the variable, like this: <COLLECTION>/path/to/variable.

    Cail_Borg2
    Cail_Borg2
    New Member
    March 7, 2024

    Agree with this. Variables in JSON should match the Figma variable name.
    I use the collection name to specify the token category, so currently what developers get in JSON is color.background.strong but appears in Figma as background/strong

      Edgaras_Benediktavicius
      Edgaras_Benediktavicius
      New Participant
      September 5, 2024

      +1 impossible to find anything if you have many Collections…

        Edgaras_Benediktavicius
        Edgaras_Benediktavicius
        New Participant
        September 17, 2024

        Decided to ignore Collections for now. Moved to one Collection and nested variable folders.

        Kerry_Johnson
        Kerry_Johnson
        Active Member
        February 21, 2026

        Figma team needs to hire more people who have had experience building the design systems out.  This would have been an immediate issue.  It’s common to have descriptors like “small”, “medium”, “large” in different collections, this is done for easier recallability over accuracy.

        By not including the collection name these mean nothing.  I am scratching my head over this decision and it would be easy to add it in as a checkmark in the search option if you’re worried about pushback.

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