Skip to main content
Ludwig_T
New Member
September 12, 2022

Need a way to “get latest updates” or “subscribe to changes” from a published community file

  • September 12, 2022
  • 43 replies
  • 5579 views

In other words a way to branch to/from a Community file

Hi everyone,
I publish a design system (DS) to the Community and have frequent updates to fix issues and add/update components.

Community members duplicate this DS to their Organizational account to use in their own projects. They have reported to me that once they import the Figma file into their org and use it as a library they have no way of getting my latest updates easily and without breaking changes into their production design files that refer to the original “duplicated” file.

So it would be great if there was a way to publish “get latest” or “subscribe to changes” in a community file. (Instead of having to restart design file from scratch in the latest version of the Design System).

Librairies features are not an option as they are specific to an ORG and cannot be accessed through the community. And Swapping in this use case does not work well at all.

This would be great for everyone as it would allow Figma to always ship with latest official components from the big design systems from Apple, Google, Microsoft and any other design system available in the community.

(If it mean anything Sketch has had this feature for years now)

43 replies

Iury_Carlos
New Member
February 20, 2024

Wow! Nice idea! +1 certainly!

Erik_Goens1
New Participant
February 26, 2024

Love this idea!!

Erik_Goens1
New Participant
February 26, 2024

Looks like this request no longer exists.

Ludwig_T
Ludwig_TAuthor
New Member
February 27, 2024

Hello @Erik_Goens1
What do you mean by:

Looks like this request no longer exists.

Both this current thread and the one linked in the comment above yours seem to be active. This one has 99 votes and the linked one has 9 but they share the same idea imho. Did I miss something?

Cheers

Marianne_Rosvik1
New Participant
May 2, 2024

Any plans to support this?

Ludwig_T
Ludwig_TAuthor
New Member
May 3, 2024

There is ConFig 2024 coming up fast, so I’m crossing my fingers we will see updates around the overall Figma Payment API experience and this feature would make sense to drive sales imho. 🤞

May 31, 2024

I agree that this is a critical feature that needs to be added to Figma. IMO it should work similarly to Github and npm packages. Users should be able to install community files locally as a project dependency and when updates are made to the project have the option to accept incoming updates.

From the publisher’s perspective there should be a way to maintain multiple versions of the project file. For instance a beta version with the newest in development features and a stable version for the current features. Additionally, they should be able to create branches off a feature branch and merge feature branches into a main branch.

The current system of only having a main branch and secondary branch is very limiting when it comes to committing larger feature changes. The process described above would help maintain projects better.

One last thing, like Github there should be a way for community members to contribute to community projects, report issues, and review requests for changes.

Mark67
August 9, 2024

Does anyone know if Figma’s partner UI Kits (seen in screenshot below) are able to achieve these live updates? I can see you can add their instances to your design without having to duplicate the library into your files. If so, it would be great to open this ability up to the public.

Ludwig_T
Ludwig_TAuthor
New Member
August 9, 2024

That is an excellent point and could be the way home from this massive pain point. ❤️ 🙏

Yet we can’t change colors yet on these UI kits so I think we are a long way from allowing people to work in a productive maner here, hopefuly it’s just a beta issue that they will resolve soon.

Ashlee_Williams
Active Member
October 7, 2024

This would be huge for me. My current project requires me to use the Salesforce Figma UI library, but there’s no way for me to automatically keep my file in sync with the Salesforce community file; I have to periodically check if they’ve updated it, download a new copy of the file, then re-link all the assets in my existing files to the assets in the new instance of the library.