I truly don’t understand why annotations needs to be behind a paid seat. It seems like most other organization here has made annotations as part of their dev hand off process. This isn’t just a minor inconvenience to the user but a huge disruption to an entire process at an organization. I do hope that Figma does reconsider making annotations available for anyone who just wants to view the wireframes.

+1 

Honestly, If my annotations can’t been seen by anyone i share with or give at least view access, I will not use these annotations. It would be a waste of time to only talk to one person when its very much a full team effort.

This is disgusting money-grubbing behaiviour Figma team. Annotations are useless if they’re behind a paid seat. Please open them to all, or don’t bother having them. Incredibly disappointed that the company is ignoring user needs and just trying to make as much money as possible. Another Adobe in the making. Users will abandon you if you don’t actually provide a good experience.;

That quote is perfect.

Esta hermosa funcionalidad, y muy útil por cierto, sólo puede ser visualizada por personas dentro del mismo TEAM, pero a veces trabajamos Diseñadores separados del equipo de desarrolladores y no los tenemos incluidos dentro del mismo TEAM.

Con lo cual esta funcionalidad de comunicación no nos sirve. Sería genial que estas Anotaciones que nos permite categorizar, pudiera ser compartida. Me gusta utilizarla para explicar temas de contenido adicionales o interacciones que debe realizar y que no siempre se pueden diseñar. 

En mi caso trabajo con muchas funcionalidades de Sistemas muy complejos y las anotaciones me resultan muy útiles para documentar ciertos procesos. Esta documentación es necesaria compartirla con DESARROLLADORES, pero también con Product Owners, Funcionales, Manager etc. Más aún si quien desarrolla no está dentro del equipo. Cómo podríamos hacer para que se pueda compartir en la opción de VIEW y no sólo en EDIT. Gracias!

+1 !!

Now that they are available to add in the design mode and have different tags for different teams, I figured they would be visible to all, but was mistaken. Please make this happen!

Seems like this is actually a bug?

​@djv It seems we have a misunderstanding here… the problem is with the AND.
No one and no company is going to pay for a seat for PMs, QAs, stakeholders, etc., to read the annotations. It simply makes absolutely no sense!

That is what we need:

Anyone with a Full or a Dev seat OR at least can view access to a file should be able to view measurements and annotations. 

Just adding another voice here. Annotations need to be viewed by any user with view access, regardless if it’s a paid seat. I use annotations to mark documentation and interactions that non-developers need to see as well (PMs, marketing, etc.). It’s ridiculous that this is locked behind a paywall. For shame, Figma

Do you have any news on it? We really miss this.

The fix outlined above does not actually fix the issue every person in this thread is highlighting. We want annotations to visible by users without paid seats (full and dev). Any user we give access to our file should be able to see the annotations. 

Indeed this is the exact issue. EVERYONE WITH VIEW access should be able to see the annotations.

Hello Figma team,

2 months passed and nothing new happened, do we need to stop using this feature ?

I mean, we paid or have been paid a licence to create annotations, great, but why asking people to pay for reading them ? the logic is that we will continue with the poorman’s comment sections and that’s all.

Are you still thinking about changing this or the case is closed ? Just to be sure.

Best

+1

Any updates on this? Agree with everyone here - annotations are only useful if they can be seen by the larger team. We just started using them, but if a change isn't made, we will need to stop using them. Thanks for your consideration. 

+1 for annotations viewable to all. We just started using them, and they have quickly become useless. Please allow everyone to see them. 

Also, please let the annotations be downloaded - we provided the figma file to a contractor, who has a full dev seat of their own Figma account and they cannot see the dev annotations either.  We only wanted them to focus on part of it (not have access to our entire project), which is why we downloaded it. But it is useless unless they are added to our project/environment with a full seat (which they already have/pay for elsewhere)?

Just adding to this, this still hasn’t been fixed.

I’m late to the game,  seems like this bug is still a bug

I used it for some time to do some handoff annotations and couldn’t believe when I realized it wasn’t visible to all users. All the annotation work is now disposable since part of the team can’t see it. Please change that. 

Better stick with plugins for now. 

I was thrilled that this feature, which appeared to be separate from Dev mode annotations (and is presented as a type of comment, no less), appeared recently. It solves many problems with marking up content for stakeholders and reviewers who only ever need to view designs.

The fact that annotations are ‘sticky’ and follow design elements around is a game-changer after using DIY and third-party markup tools, which create a confusing mess when used on evolving designs. 

So it’s hugely disappointing to find that this appears to be just a confusing variant of Dev mode annotations – and that they need a paid licence to view. We have hundreds of people who need to view designs on an occasional basis and there’s absolutely no chance (let alone a need) of them getting a paid licence.

If annotations are intended to be a paid-licence-only feature, then they’re useless – but hopefully this is just a bug that will be fixed imminently, as suggested above. 

+1 for allowing annotations to be visible for all 

Upvoting this, Annotations are great for anyone involved in a project, not solely internal designers or devs.

Adding here that annotations are not visible when embedding the frame/section either. They just disappear when viewed. Hoping when this is fixed for all those with view access that embeds will be fixed as well.

The labor cost is massive when manually crafting, positioning, and categorizing annotations because the built in annotations are locked to most users.

We can't justify Dev Mode licenses for every person who needs to see the necessary annotations attached to all our designs.

This is the biggest disappointment that Figma has shipped thus far.

+1 to this, this is super frustrating, I thought annotations are the same as comments - visible to anyone with View access….