Can we increase memory, depending of the hardware?

I am currently working on a design system, it has a lot of files and components and I have grouped the files in an atomic design way. It works very well but I am struggling to create a documentation file where I have all the instances in one file, my issue is memory.
I keep breaking components down to them to their minimum so gets easy and becomes faster to work on Figma.
My question is, can we have a way to set the memory value? Or can we have a file extension for bigger files like Photoshop does?
I find it frustrating that we can have the best hardware out there but we can’t use more than 1,5Gb of memory without having warning banners or even can’t load the files that I manage to create but can’t open anymore.
I do really love Figma and the team has done impressive work, loving the new features but I think they should care about this problem as a priority.


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This is not a limitation of Figma, this is the limitation of browsers. And since Figma is running in the browser (even the desktop app is a browser), there is not much Figma can do about it (other than creating a custom browser desktop app, which is probably super hard).

Hi Gleb,
Thank you for your reply, yes I totally understand the browser limitations, it’s the app that I don’t understand. I am just afraid that one day I need to work on moving everything to XD or other tool just because their app don’t have memory limits as Figma has.
I found some tips that could help Figma developers to increase the memory limit, hope it helps: How to increase the max memory limit for the app built by electron-builder? - Stack Overflow

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@Gil_Alvaro dont move to XD. I did the same thing but in reverse. I built the same thing in XD… assumed it was XD… rebuilt in Figma and its the same problem. XD is not built on a browser, but if you research “XD 20,000 layer limited”, this was the error I kept running into from doing the same process in XD. BUT its a fundamental issue with both XD and Figma, that NEEDS to be solved.

To the point im watching my task panel. I have 64GB of Ram… but figma crashes when my ram is maxed out at only 20%!!!

The issue is that Figma is not built on the idea of Atomic design. Which is what we are trying to do. WHY they copy EACH and every instance and just hide it in each layer as a component I’m not sure.

Instead they should be using it more like HTML & CSS, or React. Where the main base component is always the same, and its just adjusting properties and overwriting them. (The way they are doing it now is simpler to accomidate for EVERYTHING, but its not scalable).

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But automatically it’s a limitation of Figma. For now is, how Figma can tweak their desktop app memory for each file. Are they using electron right?

Each year we have a newly upgraded spec for a device but it does not make sense if the app which handles the layer has a limit on the memory, such become a waste spec of a device then lol no offense

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Still waiting for this MASSIVE app update if it ever happens. Atomic designing is very very useful to us designers.

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@Figma_Support, Please consider your largest customers who have equally a large number of mockups in each file due to the number of designers working on the projects. This is an extremely limiting constraint for creativity as we are forced to create fewer design explorations/concepts to avoid our files running out of memory. In addition, a good number of designers have 16gb+ of RAM, we need to utilise as much of that as possible in our work, not just 12% of it. A better native experience is much needed.

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It’s not only the memory (RAM) being capped to 2GB per tab but also how brutally memory hungry Figma is in comparison to other design applications.


0 to 15 empty documents open


SVG with a grid of 2048 circles


SVG containing a single path with a 2048 points


SVG of a tiger, containing around 1000 paths and many groups


1 text box containing the content of Moby Dick (~1.3 MB)

The workaround I was able to find was to add this parameter at the end of the shortcut:

 --max-old-space-size=4096

Does this really work? … I added that param to the end of my PC version shortcut and I feel there is a remarkable improvement in performance

BUT…

Am I just imagining it?

Thank you for your inputs. It would be helpful if you elaborate this in detail.

I have less memory issues after moving from 16 to 32Gb of memory (on mac). Maybe this is the way to somobody