User Preference to include or exclude object selection in undo

I find that you get lost very quickly when the selection is included in the history. Real, important changes are lost among an ocean of selections. This process lacks intuitiveness and deviates from the standard observed in all applications, not just those related to interface design. Kindly rectify this issue.

This must be fixed as soon as possible. I really can’t see any reason why selections should be included in undo-history.
Started with Figma 8 months ago, and still surprised about many odd decisions by the Figma team.

OMG this repetitive undo is truly awful. We really do need a preference setting to omit object selection as part of the undo chain.

I’ve been a designer for over 25 years, used and continue to use so many applications in my workflow. I’ve seen apps change and develop and it’s amazing what can be done these days. But I have never, ever come across an app that does this. It’s wasting soooo much time.

Here’s a typical example:

I have a nested component with layered items. The component has 3 grouped items in it, each group containing 3 or 4 other layers items. I move the component across the page, click down into the nested groups to highlight an object. Then I realise I don’t want to move the component across the page. So to simply get the component back to where it was, I now have to undo about 15 times to get it to go back. The worst part is you feel really, really lost in the process. It’s a terrible journey. It’s often quicker to start rearrange your design again than to bother with the undo!! That’s just crazy!!

Seriously - what’s the point in this Figma forum if you are not going to listen to frustrated users. 😦

+1 to everything above. It’s very annoying that Figma keeps the selection states in undo history. I constantly use undo-redo to try out something (e.g. a different color shade), and then want to compare to the previous state. With one change it works, but if I make multiple changes, undoing to the previous state requires many, even tens of ctrl+z presses.

I’ve also used other design/drawing software for many years, and I understand that sometimes a misclick might clear a carefully drafted selection, but it’s still a lot smaller annoyance than constantly going through tens of undo states doing nothing.

Please at least add a shortcut, e.g. ctrl+alt+z / cmd+opt+z, that would skip all the selection states in the undo history and go directly to the latest actual change. Shouldn’t require that much development effort - the undo action must surely know if a history state is selection or something else. (Then just add a user preference to switch it the other way around.)

Chiming in as a web developer here: object selection as part of the undo history is a nightmare. I have to select just about every element in a design file in order to make things “pixel perfect.” Amidst tasks like navigating auto-layouts, investigating components and clicking into nested groups, if I accidentally modify something during that process it’s an insane lift getting back through each and every selection I made just to undo a single errant change.

I’m admittedly using Figma to accommodate coworkers, and I’m doing my best adjusting where Figma decided to break conventions followed by other design programs. That said, this undo object selection sitch has me missing the days working with Inkscape and GIMP.

The most obvious solution, as mentioned time and again by other users here, would be to make this optional instead of mandatory, and I can tell you from my experience that such a change would be more transformative by far than literally anything done as part of Figma’s “dev mode.”

+1 to all comments here. Hoping Figma sees all this and finally works on a fix. Having to undo each click after an actual change is absolutely awful. 

When I make a design change, I want to click off the objects to see it without the bounding box highlights, to get a feel for how it looks. I hate having to undo over and over just to take one step back. 

In response to the argument for keeping extra clicks in undo steps - Yes, double clicking into multiple nested grouped layers is also annoying, and losing your spot in the nested layers can be frustrating. HOWEVER - get around all the double-clicking and opening layer after layer by cmd / ctrl clicking the object/layer you want to select. This selects the object you want in one click. Boom. 

How is this not a user preference option at the very least?! Empty clicks are not part of the history!!!

This is one of the best default features in figma – feel free to add a user preference toggle but please DO NOT DROP SUPPORT FOR THIS!!!!  

It’s so annoying, because I click and select so much that I can’t go back to actual changes I made. It’s so frustrating...

How has this not been addressed yet? Just make it optional. It’s my #1 pain point with Figma. My main gripe isn’t even how annoying it is to have to do 28 Ctrl+Zs to undo 3 things, but the fact that the undo history gets full with just selections so if I want to go back  further than a handful of changes it’s not even possible. 
 

Why? Genuinely curious. Am I using Figma all wrong?

Replied to previously, but can't stress this enough. The most annoying “feature” ever.

Just add an “Exclude/include selection in undo history” toggle!