How to use "Material 3 Design Kit" or any other library like this?

I’m new to Figma. I found a public Figma file https://www.figma.com/file/J1p6DAKmH2oD0W3qLmTOPU/Material-3-Design-Kit-(Community)?type=design&node-id=54061-36958&mode=design&t=tz1Xo5DCMrifi1ed-0 and would like to use elements from it in my projects, but I cannot figure out how to do it properly.

  • First, I cannot import it in my project because I don’t know how to do it. So I opened it in another browser tab.

  • Second, if I copy something from there, it seems to lose connection to its dependent components. For example, in the original file I can swap icon of the Menu component with any other icon provided by the kit, but if I copy this menu, I cannot swap icons anymore, even if I copy icons themselves.

So how to do it?

How to edit my post? I don’t get it…

Here is a screenshot to show what I mean.

Hey welcome and go read some manuals about team libraries. Gl hf

I’m not on a team, I’m on a free account and I try to learn some basic stuff about Figma. Can you tell me please how I can do it?

In this case your option is to grab a file a do stuff you want in it. Check assets panel for available components, it should not be a brainer to get those instances and make something

I can open that file and can copy-paste things from it. However, when I paste its components into my file, they stop being configurable.

For example, if I paste an icon button, it gets pasted with its default icon and I cannot change the icon: “instance swap” just doesn’t see the icons from the original file.

Now that I copy those icons via copy-paste, they don’t get visible to the “instance swap” tool, because they stop being components. Checkout the screenshots.

(I will send another screenshot in the follow-up reply due to some odd rules of this forum.)

Hence my question - how to get library contents properly. You said libraries is the right tool, but as I’m on a free account, I guess libraries are not available so my problem cannot be solved.

Your best bet is to stay in that original file that you got and design there. This way all the links will work and you will be able to use components normally.

To use it as external library you need a pro plan

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