How to persist color overrides between instance swaps?

Here’s what I’ve learned about this: Color overrides, and in fact all overrides, only persist if the swapped components have the same layer structure. If your icons have a different number of “vector” layers, only the number of layers from the original icon will transfer their color overrides to the swapped-in icon. If you can merge/group any vector shapes in your icon using the “union” operation, they will look like one layer and the color override should persist when swapping. Hope this explanation made sense!

I wish that was true, but it isn’t. I just tried it.

After a ton of trial and error, here’s what I learned about preserving color between instance swapping and for me, it was specifically swapping icons.

Make sure the objects in which you want the color to be preserved on have the same layers names.

On the example, I have two icons with two colors and I convert these two colors into white while hovering.

I named the icon shape-layers as primary and secondary, and then on the hover-able component I applied the color override on the layers secondary and primary.

That way If I swap this icon with an icon that also contains layers named primary/secondary, these layers will also receive the color-override.

Hey there @Daniel_Racca. I am using an icon wrapper to manage the icon size within nested components. As I do also want to have the line thickness of the icons the same also when appearing in a different size, I have created them using a stroke. But when I want to add a variant control to switch to a filled version the layer structure can be the same but the color will be recognised as stroke and not fill and therefore the override breaks.
Do you have a solution for that too? Would be nice to have a solution for this issue @Figma_Support

yeah maybe you’ll need two different iconWraps component variants and two different icon styles one for outline icons and another for filled icons and then change the colors override per icon type manually. Here’s a video and a screenshot

Hey @Daniel_Racca That’s actually not the solution to my issue. Maybe I was not entirely clear about the topic. As you can see in your example when you change the instance to the outline version I want the color overrides to remain the same. And that is simply something that is not working yet properly.
See if I do not want to work with duo color icons but just need a single color for both the line version and the fill version of the icon (both already inctances of the master component) I can control both colors (line = stroke-prop and fill = fill-prop) to be overridden by just a single click on the parent frame’s color inheritance. When changing the icon within that (including the same layer structure) the inheritance does not work properly.

Maybe it is more clearer now. I am not sure, haha.

A little bit of magic with masks

And you can keep icons just b&w

Make sure that the layer that you are applying the color to has the same name and height and width across all the other swaps.

The screenshot below if from the Figma version: Aug 24, 2023

the color override works through the instance swap for me because the following two conditions:

1. all of the 3000 shapes have same name (“vector” in my case) and
2. I have directly overridden the colors of the shapes (which have the same name, height and width) and not on the frame of the icon (which has unique names).

It doesn’t work here. I made a component with an icon and made all its states, but when I want to use that component in another frame and change de Icon it doesn’t go the color together

Hi Nathi, if you don’t mind sending me link to the file, I can take a look and see if we can fix it somehow.

god bless your tender heart

Hey @Pratyush_Tewari you are using shapes here right? Probably made out of different unified shapes with stroke and fill properties. While they can include both, once you unify them, they actually receive the color information via the fill prop if you want to change it, and as this is the same everywhere that works fine.

However if I want to use instances inside a wrapper component and inside this one change the color override of the nested one (that can then change from stroke prop to fill prop) this override will not be passed on.

I guess this is just something I have to live with and always go with a unified shape approach. Let’s see

Hi @Oliver_Schwaiger - The icons ((union / and flattened - like you mentioned, I created a massive library of about 3000 icons form the new google variable font symbols).

In my previous screenshot, these icons are being used inside the button component as an instance swap property. The buttons have colored states (like hover and disabled) and I have changed the color of the shape in each button variant.

the color override works through the instance swap for me because the following two conditions:

1. all of the 3000 shapes have same name (“vector” in my case) and
2. I have directly overridden the colors of the shapes (which have the same name, height and width) and not on the frame of the icon (which has unique names).

So when even I swap for a new icon in a button … the color override for states and variants work across all the 3000 icons inside for that icon.

I’ll make a video about it and share to explain as it seems like an important feature for massive design systems.

Thanks for the simple example. I was struggling with this problem for a long time.

Please can you link me to this video tutorial if it exists?

Muchas gracias por la información. Al día de hoy (024/07/2024) funciona este método, tenía mal nombrado las capas de los íconos y al momento de cambiar de color en los componentes los íconos no respetaban el color que asignaba, cuando cambié el nombre de los iconos por la palabra “icon” a todos por igual, funcionó por magia. Muchas gracias por la solución, me he demorado días resolviendo este problema.

Solution: Apply colour styles to the assigned variables on your main component.