I’ve been having the same issue for a few months and releases and it never occurred to me to check my memory usage. Today I realized that I had several instances of Figma Helper (both GPU and Rendered) active in the background and made a quick comparison against the app and came to the conclusion that the app renders a ‘helper’ for each open tab and the memory used related to the number of pages that each file had (guess it’s also related to the number of assets and artboards each page has but just guessing)… and all these added to the amount of memory the GPU helper was using (it was 1.3GB with only 2 projects/tabs open). After closing all projects GPU went down to 148Mb and for some reason, it’s still rendering 4 instances of this ‘helper’.
Unfortunately, for a designer managing multiple projects and design systems simultaneously, it’s not efficient as it becomes time-consuming having to wait a few more seconds for the tool to respond with each interaction. On top of that, it’s embarrassing when presenting to clients
I’m running the native app on my Macbook Pro. Processor: 2,8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 Graphics card: Radeon Pro 555 2 GB, Intel HD Graphics 630 1536 MB Memory: 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3 Figma ver.: 116.5.18
I’ve had NO issues running Figma for YEARS until now.
I got the same problem described above since 2-3 weeks ago. And it is getting worse by the day even though I’ve followed all the tips in the following article that I’ve been provided by the support team when I emailed about the problem: [Reduce memory usage in files](https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/articles/360040528173.
I’ve moved the entire design system, that was basically one file with several pages, into smaller single files with just one page.
I’m using Props, such as booleans, text etc to reduce memory usage.
Most components does not have that many variants.
I can’t be productive at work. And my client is now talking about changing from Figma to Penpot or Framer. Because they are now getting the same issues. And they have monster-hardware computers, both new Macbooks with more memory and the M2 processor & PC’s with gaming styled specs.
So, @Figma_Support any updates? Or at the bare minimum at least confirm that you’ve heard our complaints and are trying to deal with the root of the problem?
My Macbook Pro is relatively new and is normally super fast. (Apple M1 Pro, memory 32Gb)
Regardless of whether I am using app (Figma ver.: 116.5.18) or operating Figma in Chrome or Firefox, it is super slow and unusable. I cannot even add text override to instance without it getting stuck.
There are no alerts to memory usage however Figma Helper (Render) uses up to 100% CPU.
@Ida_Melank I’ve been having communication with the @Figma_Support thru email.
It has taken them app. 5-6 weeks now and I’m no where close to figure out this problem. In the beginning they were sending me “advise” that the error message already provided… and if I didn’t read that, I could easily find their email advise on their website by just performing a easy Googling.
Me and my client are at a stage right now were we’re looking at converting to Framer instead. Not because we want to. Because none of us want to do it. But because the “help” & communication we’re getting from Figma is soooo poor and are taking sooooo incredible long time to get.
I really hope you will get better service than I did. But if I were you, try to find/create another solutions so you won’t miss your deadlines.
Only some portions of my file were unusable, others were fine, not consuming the CPU.
I ended up finding the issue on my end. It seems that some of the components using variants have gone corrupt. I had to ungroup the variants and regroup them and that solved the problem for me. CPU is working normally.
So it seems that this issue can happen for a multiple reasons, not saying that it is like that on your end, but perhaps worth trying - especially if trying to over-ride instances of components using variants.
Same here. Just upgraded to a base Mac Studio and am suddenly enable to type comments without it lagging every other letter for large amounts of time when typing a comment. Using the latest build ( 116.5.18).
Opening in the browser has the same issue.
Two days ago I was working on this same document on a 2018 Mac Mini (i3, 32GB ram) and it was flawless, so it seems like an M1 thing to me.
@Figma_Support why is Figma suddenly is CRUSHING my CPU? Cannot get any work done. Have been kicked off multiple video meetings across both google meet and zoom when I am trying to show them designs done in figma.
Looks like your team has been entirely unresponsive to multiple threads I have found in this forum, all relating to this same issue. For the love of god to you have an update? I run an agency and this is making my machine entirely unusable. Even with all other programs shut down and only figma running, rendering is spiking to over 75% system CPU usage.
This, exactly. I already closed all my files and even the most simple light file will trigger an Application Memory notification, to a point where my computer freezes and restarts. This is not only annoying but also impacting my productivity and my ability to deliver projects on time. This is absolutely unthinkable.@Figma_Support, please update us on this matter.
@Jao_Renzo_Miranda: @Figma_Support won’t do anything. I lost a client because of this error. I got no help basically, or the little to none help I got didn’t solve the issue.
If I were you I would try to buy or get a new design system that has no affiliation with the old, and redo everything in a new files and in a new project folder. It’s not fun but maybe you can save the client relationship by doing so.
I had to delete long lists and animations to overcome this; then I split the work into multiple files. The per-file limit is a problem but was much less pronounced when there is only one designer working on the file at a time.
Same problem. Of course, I don’t know the solution, but maybe the problem is with automatic saving? Figma saves every few seconds. If the Internet goes out, she still manages to save everything. She probably saves everything all the time and doesn’t delete it. When you open Figma there is still a lot of memory. But the longer you work in Figma, the memory becomes less and less. Is there any way to delete your save history somewhere?
@jonasbroms
I have the same problem. Figma is lagging every action is so slow it is almost impossible to work. I had 16GB memory Macbook and the app was freezing all the time, so Our IT support provide me with a 32 GB memory it improved a little bit but still it start to lagging after 5-10 minute of work, every action takes a lot of time, even zoom in and out, dive in to the component.
@Alina_Brender Really sorry to hear that you’ve gotten this issue.
It’s important to recognize that, regardless of added memory to your physical machine, Figma’s functionality is capped at 2GB due to WASM web browser limitations. This applies even to the Figma “native” app, as it essentially operates within a web browser framework.
The Figma team can uncap it to a maximum of 4GB… for me, it didn’t do any wonders unfortunately.
From my experience, it’s unlikely that Figma support will offer any good solution in this scenario.
Another challenging aspect is that you probable need to overhaul your entire design system, a process that is both time-intensive and complex. Because that is how you actually solve this issue.
@Alina_Brender@Alexey12
A practical approach to manage complexity and memory demands might be the adoption of “Slot components” in your design. For guidance, these videos could be useful:
Currently, I’m not under any contract, so I’m available for a mentor session. I’d be glad to examine your issue in a video call and provide assistance. However, I must be upfront about the complexity of this situation and the limited documentation available, so I can’t guarantee a definitive solution. Me at ADPList Mentorship
