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Hi all,


I work on a design system team as part of design ops. we run a hybrid design system model so product teams actually manage their own theme libraries with our “template” library.


current behavior in Figma:



  • insert a global comp

  • swap global theme lib to brand theme lib

  • insert a new global comp

  • swap theme lib again just so this new comp can have the brand colors


problem statement

as a des ops person, I want Figma style library swap to match by all styles rather than just visible styles in a file, so that when a new comp is inserted there is no need to swap styles library again.


potential solutions as brainstorm:



  • link all styles via ID or some kinda of meta data in addition to the name (name still need to match otherwise we create communication gaps on brands using their own styling names)

not sure if you ever got an answer but might be related @Natalie_Mae Post-swap styles workflow

You could achieve that on frames or sections using variables modes (not supporting everything currently covered by styles yet, though, especially typography).

Hey @Antoine thanks for chiming in!


We tested variables but given that our central design system does not manage all 50 brand themes, we don’t have all color sets in one variable file. (also wonders if performance would tank when there are 50 modes for 1000+ variables)


Also natively there is no way to swap variables either. which means even if a product team duplicate our global variable library and customize everything locally - it cannot be applied without manually relinking all variables to components. Solution to this is to give all design team edit rights to the global variable file - which brings other risks with non-library folks messing things up.

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