Slides improvement - Automatic page numbers on Slide Decks

This is a big one for sure that’s missing. Ideally we get at least the same functionality we get in say google slides: (skip title slide and/or apply to selected)

Thanks both for the feedback!

@HH1 can you elaborate more on your message? I want to make sure I understand correctly so I can file this feedback appropriately. Would you want an ability to select certain slides > number them based in the order of selected slides > have any unnumbered slides be bumped down? Or just ability to skip those, but leave them in place in the order they’re made in the slide (sorry if that was confusing).

Maybe we can select any text and give it the numbering option

Hello, thank you for your return !

Well in tools like PowerPoint, Slide or Keynote, you can insert dynamic slide numbers that automatically update when slides are rearranged. Similarly, InDesign allows for headers and footers with auto-updating page numbers and chapter titles.

In my opinion, the easiest way is to let the user add a footer, which can include the title, date, number, or even a Table of Contents for navigation.

Implementing a similar feature in Figma would greatly enhance document organization and consistency.

Or been able to select the number in an existing footer and have an option to link that number to the pagination. That could be also nice to have.

Footers are a great idea, but sometimes that info is also at the top. So being able to have Headers/Footers that automatically apply to all slides, would be amazing. This way we can change the date or version number in all slides and have it propagate to all slides.

I agree, it would be great to be able to customize slide numbering automatically. Options like “Page 01, Page 02,” “01, 02, 03,” or “Page 1 of 6” would be excellent additions. Having these page numbering options update automatically would enhance the usability and presentation quality significantly.

@ksn happy to elaborate as well and echo some of what others said. Also to clarify, in case I stumbled into the wrong request, I was speaking specifically to the new “Figma Slides” platform, though having this is in regular Figma with artboards would be welcome as well (though there are a few plugins that do something similar via components).

Just to address the “why” of this (in case it isn’t self-evident) when sharing slide-based presentations, it’s important to speak to specific areas of the presentation and have that be embedded visually on the slide. The easiest way to do this is to tell the viewer of the presentation "see slide ‘number here’ " and have that number embedded somewhere on the slide itself (as others have mentioned it would be great to have this placement (as well as styling) flexible as a huge part of using Figma for this is the design flexibility overall).

Though there is built in numbering to Figma’s presentation/prototype “viewer” UI as well as an external PDF viewers, it’s not always evident (needing to leave presentation mode to see numbering/hidden in thumbnail browsing etc). There is also a variety of preference as to when numbering starts, IE: on the title slide, after the title slide, after the table of contents ETC. Having that numbering on the slide/page itself is often a core part of a document viewing experience.

So having that numbering have a degree of automation has become the default in these kinds of tools due to the length and editorial nature of presentations, and relying on Figma’s built in “presentation-mode numbering UI” is also problematic because, again, this is no reference while viewing the presentation in a clean/overlay free mode, or in exported pdf form (depending on your pdf viewer).

I can’t think of a document tool (word, powerpoint, pages, keynote, indesign, G-suite etc) that doesn’t have an automatic page/slide-numbering function. I’d encourage exploration of how those tools handle “auto-numbering” as it seems to be a pretty common feature at this point, usually accessed by insert>page/slide number.

One idea is they could have is just use the variables concept, but by default a Slides file has a preset number variable called current slide. so you can apply it to some text and put it wherever you want, and the pre-built templates can come with it already applied

Page numbering seems like a very important feature for slide decks.

Expose slide numbers as a variable so a person can bind the slide number variable to a text box or component.