100%!!! Having a manual resize from a bottom-right anchor like some plugins have would be so helpful!!!

It feels super weird that it transforms the window size based on how many modes or variables you have! I really don’t like how narrow it is when there’s just one mode, and I don’t like that adding modes permanently changes the min-width!

Not to mention that the groups list will get obscured if the number of variables in the currently selected group is shorter, requiring you to scroll to see the list.

Whilst setting variables its been a pain having the variables window changing size whilst switching between collections and groups. Allow the window to either be fixed to an edge of the application of at be a fixed size… please 🙂 😁 Thanks

Agreed, this gets annoying fast when switching between collections or even selecting a subset within a collection. Very disorienting.

agreed, not a well thought out feature

Yes please! This is annoying me all the time, just after setting up a few variables 😦

Yes exactly this. It is extremely poor UX and really gets in the way of re-organising variables.

omg I totally agree with this!

I voted for this. I would like to resize the window horizontally as I have some long token names for ‘alias’ variables which I cannot view easily.

Totally agree! Really annoying. Sadly out of votes but +1

Figma, can you please fix this? At least remove the auto resize, it’s such an incredibly frustrating experience. I really want to use variables, I have to, and I know it’s in beta but this UX is really quite irritating.

Like a 1000% this. Please fix this incredibly frustrating UI that makes it very difficult to find variable groups and rearrange them. Also, please make the columns for variable names and values resizable.

And just in general: please give me a flexible UI that I can rearrange and customize myself and don’t try to do it for me (I’m looking at you, skinny Design panel with short and narrow menus on my 4K monitor; why is so much text truncated? why do I have to scroll for days in this tiny box?). I think Adobe figured this one out like two decades ago.

Because of my, sometimes not short, name convention, it’s hard to read.

This is a little bit of a usability issue as well.

@Phil_Larsen I was able to modify the Figma CSS in a way that prevents the window from resizing vertically when selecting different variable groups. I made it fill almost the entire height of my Figma canvas, which made it a lot easier to work with large groups of variables. I’m using the desktop app, but the steps will be the same for the browser once you open the dev console. Follow these steps to replicate:

1. 
   

   Open the Figma Variables window.

   
   


2. 
   

   Open the Chrome dev console
   
   

   
   
   


3. 
   

   In the dev console, switch to the Elements tab
   
   

   
   


4. 
   

   Toggle the Element Picker tool
   
   

   
   


5. 
   

   Click on the footer in the Variables window.
   
   

   
   
   
   This will select the HTML element in the DOM tree in the dev console.
   
   
   
   
   


6. 
   

   Traverse the hierarchy of HTML elements up two levels and select the grandparent element. It should have the class name similar to mine and starts with variables_modal--container--...:
   
   

   
   
   


7. 
   

   Find the CSS styling of this element in the Styles tab:
   
   

   
   


8. 
   

   Change the min-height value from 300px to calc(100vh - 120px); or whatever else you like. You should notice the changes immediately.
   
   

   
   

You can close the Chrome dev console now.

One caveat is that you will have to redo these steps for every open file and after every time you relaunch Figma until they address this terrible usability issue.

Nice! Your last paragraph was my first question though. My current behavior is such that it would be a pain to utilize these steps, yet nonetheless it is a smart work around.

🤞t2: they fix it soon!

If time permits, I’ll look into making a user script or something similar that can reduce the number of steps to get this hack working, even if it doesn’t persist after closing the app.

I’ve been complaining about the tiny sizes of panels and menus for a long time and to everyone who listens. Figma enables great capabilities, but for some reason the usability basics are being overlooked. Every time I pick a component instance, color, or text style I have to search or scroll within tiny boxes where every text string is truncated on my 4K monitor. So much wasted space! And I use those menus and the property panel WAAAAY more often than prototyping, collaboration, dev handoff, or branching features. Like, literally every few minutes. So, Figma annoys me every few minutes. But I know improved menu usability isn’t going to attract new customers or something. It’s only something you find out after you start using the product. Still, would be a huge quality of life improvement for anyone using or building component libraries and design systems.

I had this same issue. But now when I tried to today, it works to resize the local variables window (see gif). 🥳

Same! Thanks for bringing attention to this 😃

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