Please make Dev Mode Annotations visible by all roles, not just Full Dev Mode seats. This can become costly for users needing context but not all the other dev-mode features.
Here’s the scenario:
We have a dashboard, with cards showing a customer’s account status. This status can be mapped from multiple back-end statuses, to show just one front-end status. For example, any of the following could be mapped to a single status known to the customer as “Completed”: canceled, terminated, sold, complete, etc.
This is something that the developer needs to reference, but then also the PM needs to reference in writing tickets (who doesn’t need full dev-mode access), the QE needs to reference for testing automations, and various other individuals on our team. Placing it in a comment makes it less clearly attached to the specific piece of the design, and requires us to keep documentation dispersed among different tools (Jira, Confluence, Figma etc).
Simply making Dev mode annotations visible to viewers would make for far less duplicate documentation or added dependency on other documentation tools for a designer and team.
I totaly agree with the fact that annotation is the most greedy functionnolity we have see so far. We understand you need to consolidate your business model, but such a thing, knowing how bad the comments work (you can”t copy pas them along with a screen for example), I, like many others here, need this functionnality to be visible for standard viewers. this is a functionnality for communicating more clearly on our daily changes.
We already pay a lot for a seat. This is not asking for this feature to be used by free members, juste we ask to make them VISIBLE.
So please figma team, make an urgent update to let everyone use this feature.
Hey All, thank you for your honest feedback!
We’ve updated this topic into a feature request and edited the title for clarity. We’ll pass this onto our team for future consideration.
please make the future quick this time, please.
The new annotations and measurements feature is really great and helpful, but it’s basically useless because visitors can’t see it without a full seat.
This is especially problematic when you’re working on projects with hundreds of people, as it’s pointless to pay for a full seat for everyone who only needs to glance at screens and concepts occasionally.
So, please add the option to set annotations and measurements visibility to „everyone,“ even for visitors without a full seat.
I concur with this. The feature should be able available to all. As Product Owners, BAs and Dev need to be able to see annotations. Not all have edit role. Can we please get this included for reviewer role?
+1 for annotations viewable to all! Especially for PM, PO and QA roles!
+1 yes, annotations viewable for all!!
+1 yes, figma annotations viewable to all!!! <3
+100 Totally agree. I really love the new annotations but as mentioned by others the usefulness and value is very limited if only designers or developers can see them. reviewers and other stakeholders shouldn’t need dev seats.
Agree with Michel A. I do love the new annotations especially with the custom tags, however I liked the interactivity of them in dev mode previously. We often utilize these for dev and behavior notes, but with them either always on or always off, you have to really space out your annotations so it doesn’t cover other content. If there was a way to implement something like before where you just see a summary of the # of annotations attached to the frame and when you click on that frame the notes show, that would be a great in between from the previous dev only annotations.
Love the annotation feature….very useful and helpful…
Would be nice if I could place them where it makes sense and it not just snapping to the middle of a frame or the side...sometimes it obscures screen flow lines.
I like this feature a LOT for documentation purposed!
REQUEST: I do want to be able to drag the annotations to organize them within the vertical columns so that the order is more inline with the content and easier for the developers to follow.
Also, if I fail to match the target element, I'd like to reassign the annotation to another element.
Careful Figma, you’re going the way of Adobe.
I feel like you’re very focused on internal teams and forgetting many, many people use Figma in agency settings and need to share view-only links with clients.
Clients absolutely need to see annotations — or at least give the option in the sharing settings.
Another up for making Annotations visible for everyone. This is such a bummer and I really don’t understand this decision of Figma
very slapdash at the moment, great idea and nothing i cant build myself (i already built design annotation components to add to designs anyway and theyre better than the new figma ones) but its a start I’m sure they’ll improve over time, e.g. needs:
- reassignment
- change positioning
- change visibility
- link to data etc
Have to disagree with @Nellya here.
What’s the purpose of dev-mode if all the features are shown in design-mode?
I feel it’s better to keep them separate and show based on roles. Annotations and Measurements are meant for developing, so they are better suited to be shown in dev-mode.
Showing them in design mode will just make the UI that much more cluttery.
And to make it worse, hiding annotations/measurements in design-mode also hides in dev-mode! A big blunder, if you ask me. Hiding in design mode should not hide in dev-mode.
+1 yes, figma annotations viewable to all!
+1 for allowing annotations to be visible for all 🙏🏻
+1 for allowing annotations to be visible for all 🙏🏻
+1 for allowing annotations to be visible for all 👹
+1 to make annotations visible for all 👹
+1 for annotations viewable to all!
+1 for this no-brainer request!!
Fully agree - this is actually a feature I’ve been waiting for years for, but is useless since it requires paid seats. This feature is dead in the water unless all users can see them.
This is actually why I don’t use them, I hope this changes so it brings better collaboration in Figma files
I just spent 2 hours setting up annotations for devs AND OTHER STAKEHOLDERS only to learn that the second group cannot see it?!
Are you seriously expecting dozens of occasional users to get dev license just because of this?
Well, two hours wasted, back to adding them manually as components. It’s so sad to see Figma slowly turning into Adobe… this is what happens when you have a monopoly unfortunately.
After spending two hours setting up detailed annotations, I learned that people with Viewer licenses do not see them.
Annotations are for explaining non-obvious behavior to devs and others including occasional users. While devs are the primary audience, in large enterprise settings (which segment I assume is Figma’s primary source of revenue) usually there’s a large number of stakeholders who are occasionally involved in conversations. It is infeasible to get a dev or editor seat to each person loosely involved in the project just because it’s needed for a convenience feature once a quarter.
We’re back to adding annotations manually, as overlaid components.
Same as Zoli, spent significant time using annotations just to find out that stakeholders can’t see them.
This is a horrible monetization decision because we’re just going to go back using custom annotations via components.
