Megathread preferred values and published vs hidden

5 months ago
April 22, 2025
2 replies
127 views

Veneruso_Annie
New Participant
6 replies

The issue being faced today:

I want to have preferred values only show up under the instance swap feature. Not searchable in the assets panel, as these are typically sub-components that I don’t want to be used on their own (examples: a dropdown menu used in a global navigation component, the vector for an icon used to instance swap in an actual icon component to control the sizes via icon properties, a single segment used inside a donut chart, pre-configured links or buttons commonly used inside a bigger component to make it easier to select from a pre-set).

Why this isn’t possible:

Unpublished and hidden components are treated the same in Figma.
Hiding/unpublishing a component in Figma is currently the only way for it to not show up in the assets panel.
Hiding/unpublishing a preferred value leads to additional issues:
1. Preferred values cannot be selected by library consumers if they are unpublished.
2. Preferred values must be published in order for updates to be available to library consumers.

The current workaround (that isn’t that great):

Leaving preferred values published which means consumers can grab unintended components for use from the assets panel, but this is necessary to continue receiving updates.
Or not use the preferred value feature in instance swaps, and relying more on creating additional variants with unpublished components that would have been a preferred value. And every time I need to update that component, I must publish, update, then unpublish the component again.

Related threads with this issue:

Apolline
Active Member
71 replies
4 months ago
June 2, 2025

I discovered this today, I totally thought hiding the component would mean it would still receive updates

Veneruso_Annie
Author
New Participant
6 replies
4 months ago
June 2, 2025

Apolline wrote:

I discovered this today, I totally thought hiding the component would mean it would still receive updates

Yeah, I think it’s because a hidden component is not published and only published components receive updates in other files. I don’t quite understand why this is the case, as there are times where having a component hidden from the Assets panel is necessary (you don’t want them to be searchable).

For example, any published components using hidden sub-components won’t receive updates unless the sub-component is also published 😓 Hoping Figma can change this someday

The issue being faced today:

I want to have preferred values only show up under the instance swap feature. Not searchable in the assets panel, as these are typically sub-components that I don’t want to be used on their own (examples: a dropdown menu used in a global navigation component, the vector for an icon used to instance swap in an actual icon component to control the sizes via icon properties, a single segment used inside a donut chart, pre-configured links or buttons commonly used inside a bigger component to make it easier to select from a pre-set).

Why this isn’t possible:

Unpublished and hidden components are treated the same in Figma.
Hiding/unpublishing a component in Figma is currently the only way for it to not show up in the assets panel.
Hiding/unpublishing a preferred value leads to additional issues:
1. Preferred values cannot be selected by library consumers if they are unpublished.
2. Preferred values must be published in order for updates to be available to library consumers.

The current workaround (that isn’t that great):

Leaving preferred values published which means consumers can grab unintended components for use from the assets panel, but this is necessary to continue receiving updates.
Or not use the preferred value feature in instance swaps, and relying more on creating additional variants with unpublished components that would have been a preferred value. And every time I need to update that component, I must publish, update, then unpublish the component again.

Related threads with this issue:

Page 1 / 1

I discovered this today, I totally thought hiding the component would mean it would still receive updates

Apolline wrote:

I discovered this today, I totally thought hiding the component would mean it would still receive updates

Yeah, I think it’s because a hidden component is not published and only published components receive updates in other files. I don’t quite understand why this is the case, as there are times where having a component hidden from the Assets panel is necessary (you don’t want them to be searchable).

For example, any published components using hidden sub-components won’t receive updates unless the sub-component is also published 😓 Hoping Figma can change this someday

Megathread preferred values and published vs hidden

2 replies

Reply

Cookie policy

Cookie settings

Reply

Related topics

Hide from assets panel, but show in properties panelicon

How to select hidden components as preferred values?icon

"Publish all preferred values" with hidden componentsicon

Preferred values and libraries

File Memory and Preferred Values instance swappingicon

Sign up

Login with SSO

Login to the community

Login with SSO

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded

Cookie policy

Cookie settings