Stop automatically adding FigmaAgent to Login Items

Please stop installing the FigmaAgent as a Login Item every time we start Figma or when Figma updates. 

These types of agents are nothing but spyware no matter what they may also be used for. I can not imagine that it does not call home at least when it starts (to check for updates or whatnot), and thus you get a log of whenever a user start their computer! That is definitely not information that is crucial to your business. It is creepy. It makes your company look very bad!

1. Install it once on the first install if you want to.
2. DO NOT REINSTALL IT ON UPDATES EVER! If it is not in the list The user has removed it for a reason!
3. Start the agent when Figma starts if needed (and shut it down when Figma closes) but I can not imagine that the Figma app itself can’t do whatever the agent does.

I can’t believe this is the only solution. Figma, do better.

This is just a great example of arocance from a big software company.

Thank you for this! Figma obviously doesnt care about their users, this is incredibly intrusive and the fact they chose not to do anything about it, its definitely intentional, something Facebook or Adobe would do.  I will not be using them in the future for client work, absolutely disgusting practice from a business.

+1,

I really don’t want things running that don’t need to be when I only open Figma a few times a month.

Terrible user-hostile app is terrible.

Please add 20 more things to autostart every time, clearly that’s a fantastic idea, and your paying users are more than happy to have this happen to their computers.

I’m quite fed up with this happening. It’s pretty much every time that I open the Figma app there’s an updated version getting installed which re-adds the login item. And now I come here to find out that the Figma team has known this behaviour has been (and continues to be) an active irritant to their users for at least the past two years, yet a change in this behaviour or a setting to prevent it hasn’t been developed in all that time?! What the heckle?!?!

This isn’t a helpful feature in the slightest. It’s another shining example of user choice being stripped away because the developer “knows what’s best” for their own goals. “Oh, just use the web app- you’re using the Mac app wrong and misunderstand the intention!” Hahaha!! Good one.

Besides, I know that there are other ways to achieve the alleged goals of the FigmaAgent. Opening figma URLs and updating fonts? Please. I can think of at least a dozen apps that can be opened without an app-specific background agent being run all the time yet resulting in the exact same user experience that I’ve seen with Figma. Operating systems have APIs for these things, and browsers do as well. Heck- progressive web apps can be opened simply by clicking on a link that points to their domain, as long as the developers have things properly configured!

As for updating fonts, that can be done during runtime of the actual app. I don’t need my computer to be wasting resources to constantly monitor my fonts directory in hopes that there may be some change made there that Figma needs to know about immediately. There are other creative apps that simply load in the fonts from their cache at startup, then asynchronously updates the list in the background while the user is working on their project to keep things as quick in the UI as possible. No app restart required! All this without a separate background agent monitoring things! I have enough stuff running in the background, thank you.

Even for the users that keep Figma open all day, every day, I can understand having a separate process to help out the main application (not a separate app/agent though). But once the app is open, the background agent isn’t really needed at all. Right? And for the users that open Figma less frequently, or a few times or less per month, having that background agent really does nothing at all but add to their startup time. Especially on HDD-based computers. (Which are more numerous than people may think, as there are those who are doing their part to minimize e-waste. But that’s a completely separate topic.)

Finally, there are a bunch of users who do not and will not engage in forums such as this regardless of their opinion, especially for a single issue. It may be for them it’s a small problem in the grand scheme of things, or they were happy to accept one of the workarounds helpfully offered by other users, or they’ve decided to wait and see what would happen in the future- OR maybe they’ve even changed to another, less aggressive product that’s available. I, for one, appreciate now being aware of Balsamiq because of this thread. I’m sure there are others thankful for the option as well.

I’ll add another alternative to Figma that is open source, has a FREE service with paid upgrades, and also can be installed on an internal corporate server (or any server)!

It’s PenPot: https://penpot.app/

They’ve had a vast amount of improvements and development from their community over the past few years especially. I’ve used PenPot before and enjoyed it quite a bit, and I will now be switching over to it as my primary prototyping system. I can even help contribute to that project to help improve the product! Long live open source!

2 Years later and this is STILL the only way to stop it.

Make it a user setting. Not everyone who uses your product wants the application’s “help”.

Adding my complaint here. How is this VERY SIMPLE AND REASONABLE request being ignored?? To busy adding AI features no one wants, as the rest of the IT world? (Can’t wait for that bubble to burst). Switching to Penpot too. Unbelievably bad service of such a big name.