Merge only select elements

Keeping this request alive, we just got access to branching and I had assumed omitting or selectively merging changes in was something you could do. Hopefully it gets an update.

Keeping this alive, we are still suffering the current branching model and would love one designed to be used by designers

Coming from game development. Branching is a fundamental part of my workflow no matter the size of the team involved. Branching allows for isolation of incremental improvement, and injection of approved improvements at the right time. The ability to inject these changes in small doses AND keep the branch alive(!) after a merge is crucial.

• Branching allows designers to work on future releases and temporary changes that does not necessarily have to be a perpetual arc in the product.
• Branching protects developers from overstimulus to design ideation. Even though Figma allows for everyone to participate in design (which is fantastic), design can be very overwhelming for non-seasoned designers or stakeholders.

The current behavior is in some ways detrimental to the agility of design ideation. This is a missed opportunity for such a great product like Figma.

• Having to kill a branch when merging, thereby not being able to merge selected items from that branch, does not allow for several preplanned versions and temporary (seasonal, thematic etc.) iterations of the design being worked simultainiously.
• Having all changes pass through the main file is, which is viewable to everyone on any branch (as far as I understand) undermines the potential to isolate and direct design, sicnce everyone will end up looking to main for updated design.
• Not being able to merge one branch into another branch, increases the amount of work involved in maintaining design itterations.

I wholeheartedly agree with the changes requested here! In the way branching is currently implemented, it is practically unusable for me and our company-wide workflow. And in my opinion it neither keeps the promise that Figma made when announcing this feature (“you know it from software development and such” blabla) nor is it worth the substantial surcharge for Figma Organization accounts.

The current implementation of branching feels nearly useless. What’s the purpose of having branches if I can’t merge them effectively? As it stands, I’m only able to choose whether to keep the artboard from Branch A or Branch B, without a proper merging process.

The result: I have to choose the artboard that requires the least rework and then redo everything manually. This completely overlooks the fact that most changes aren’t full artboard overhauls, but smaller, detailed modifications within the artboards.

I recently faced significant difficulty justifying this feature to my employers, under the assumption that it would work as intended. After they finally approved it, I discovered during our first major merge that Figma’s branching feature falls short of expectations. It feels like this feature exists mainly to sell Organization seats, because in its current state, it’s practically unusable.

May I know if this is in the pipeline? This feature is pretty much useless without the ability to select what to merge.

Merging is a chaotic in a file with a lot of pages and with more than one people working on. We should be able to merge only one page or component, with a option to lock or not lock a page or component when a branch is created.

No one from Figma seems to be on this thread but just wanted to add my +1 to this

Would love to be able selectively merge, just like we can selectively publish components

Well, well, well
Just upgrade to Organization for branches… what a deceptive move.
How can I not choose what to merge ???
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I will keep branches without merging* as archives, and copy-paste what I keep to the truth file.

* like this, I hope that the saturation of servers with heavy weighted file will make Figma to hear us about this non-ecological method

+1 I’ve been trying out branches for my latest project. Coming from a development background, it does not work as expected. I thought I want just using it wrong, but it seems like from reading threads here that there just isn’t really deep functionality. It’s very hard to pick and choose specific elements to come forward into my branches, while not merging things that will ruin my branch for my specific situation. I currently don’t trust the results, and the lack of specificity makes this feature more or less unusable.