As editor and maybe also as viewer I want to be able to see where specific components are used. So I’m basically talking about way to find instances of a component across files.
There’s a plugin called “Instance Finder” but unfortunately it’s just working within one file not across.
For huge design systems with multiple files and different designers working on it this is far from ideal.
This idea is not new but since the other topics are closed I guess I need to open a new thread.
Adding to the discussion. I assume most Figma users work on one design at a time and are not using a global design system. My team works on SAAS products with hundreds of page designs across dozens of projects. I am currently trying to understand how disruptive a component design change would be across all our products. But I can’t easily find how often this component is being used. I should be able to have a global view of where the instance of the component is used. As someone mentioned, Sketch was able to do this. 😓
I might be wrong but Library analytics seems to only point out and open Figma files that have a published component instance in them. Once in the file with the instance there are only plugins to search for components but no Figma "official" tool. If anyone knows of a tool that can search across files and pinpoint instances of published assets that would be great.
I have a phantom instance of a component from Library A in the Design System document for Library B so that Library B insists on saying that Library A is being “used in the file” and there’s literally no way to just search the document for things from that library.
All of the suggestions from older threads refer to a “used in this file” section of the assets pane which does not seem to exist any more. I suspect it may be complicated by the fact that the original component was deleted from Library A.
But there’s no reason that the assets pane shouldn’t show you a list of what assets are coming from what other files and the ability to find them within your file. That seems like incredibly basic level functionality.
++++ Really need this feature. I work in the corporation with a lot of products but with one design system, and i have to go through many design files blindly FOR HOURS to find use cases of a component, because i simply don’t know where we use it in our interfaces, because it’s a lot of products out there really.
It’s hard to work without this feature in the big companies, especially if you’re new employee. I have to bother my colleagues with those questions and they happens not to know an answer themselves!
As editor and maybe also as viewer I want to be able to see where specific components are used. So I’m basically talking about way to find instances of a component across files.
There’s a plugin called “Instance Finder” but unfortunately it’s just working within one file not across.
For huge design systems with multiple files and different designers working on it this is far from ideal.
This idea is not new but since the other topics are closed I guess I need to open a new thread.
I am a manager of the design system library in my org and I am trying to find instances of components in other designer files via the Org Libraries options, to see how components are being used. Clicking on a component takes me to the design file, but it doesn’t link to the frame where the component is used, which is what I would expect (even if it’s used in multiple instances, I would want to see at least one of them). So I have to manually search for the component between dozens of pages and …
I’ve created a separate file with a library of my design system. Let’s say I’ve got a component of the checkbox with 3 instances. I open another file with some screens and I would like to see if my second instance is used in any of the screens and if yes then where? I know there is a plugin “Instance finder” but it doesn’t work for different files.
We few can’t be the only ones who are missing this feature. Are we?
Hi Dennis,
I use Instance Finder. Here’s the workaround for finding an instance in another file: • Copy an instance of the component into the file where you want to locate its usage • Select the copied instance • Click Find in Instance Finder
I manage a design system spread across multiple Figma files and regularly transfer components between files.
The Swap Libraries feature generally works well, but sometimes a component is shown as originating from another library/file even though I can't locate that component anywhere.
Issue:
The component appears to still be linked to a different file/library.
I search through the Components panel manually and cannot find it.
Searching by the component name also returns no results.
Because of this, I can't understand where the component is coming from or properly swap/remove it.
Suggested feature
I think it would be very helpful to see in which pages a component is being used, or at least have a reliable way to locate it. In some cases, components may be hidden or used through instance swaps, which currently makes them impossible to trace.
I built a free widget for this, Sourceline. Place it next to a main component in your library file, and it shows how many team files and instances use it, which of those files are active, and an impact badge, so you can judge a change before you make it. It reads files through the REST API with your own read-only token. https://www.figma.com/community/widget/1686375993972598287/sourceline
To @Roman_Luks’s point - you can see some of the files a component is used in via analytics in the Figma UI. I manage a design system at scale so I need to be able to see not only some, but all of the files that leverage a component. It’s really silly from my view that the Figma Analytics API only surfaces how many files it was used it. I want to be able to run an audit, so a number is not helpful. I’m in a locked down environment, so I can’t use community plug-ins. The need for this is complementary to how slots have started to give more freedom, which is good for flexibility, but we need to be able to audit to see how people use them so we know if we can tune this over time.
Use case: We have a card component with a slot. Folks are using that many ways, we need to see how so we can suggest some guidelines.
If we can’t use Figma to do this: We just use code and Figma is one step closer to death. We lose the opportunity to address the problem upstream.
