My Figma files aren’t loading as they should not letting me work as fast as I should.
Hey, thank you for reaching out. There could be a couple of reasons why the file is loading slowly. Let’s try first and clear the desktop app’s cache:
Here’s how to clear the desktop app cache on a Mac:
- Quit the Figma desktop app
- Open Terminal.app and enter the following command:
rm -rf "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Figma/"{Desktop,DesktopProfile} - Try opening the desktop app again
I also recommend checking if the file is too large since that could trigger such behaviour.
Figma is a browser-based app, which means it’s subjected to a 2GB available memory limit that applies to each browser tab, including those in our Desktop App. When loading or editing Figma files nears or exceeds this memory limit, it can cause performance issues like long load times or crashes.
If loading a file exceeds the browser’s available memory, you will need to restore a previous version of this file from the file browser. Here’s how to do this:
- Hold down the modifier keys and click on the file in the file browser
- Mac: ⇧Shift ⌃Control ⌥ Option
- Windows: Alt + Shift
- Select Restore from version.
- Click Restore next to the appropriate version.
You may need to go back more than one version to find one that loads.
Once you’re able to load your file, our Help Center article on how to Reduce memory usage in files has helpful information on how to avoid hitting this limit again. We suggest checking your file for the following elements which can cause a high available memory use, especially when used in components:
- Images added to your File at a much larger size than they’re used at.You can check this by temporarily toggling your image Fill settings to ‘Tile’, 100% which will show you the full image size available to you. If it’s significantly larger than it’s being used at we suggest you either flatten that image layer or export and re-add it as a new fill so it is stored at only the size you need.
- A large amount of content spread across multiple Pages. We suggest you cut and paste content from this file into a new file so that you aren’t loading the content you don’t need to when opening a file. To preserve connections between instances and their main components, please follow the instructions in our Move published components article.
- Hidden layers:Loading and then hiding a large number of layers, especially in components or with images stored in them, can cause a high use of available memory on loading.
- Stacked Masks and Effectslike shadows and blurs also take a lot of memory to load.
If your file is very small or doesn’t contain any of these elements and you’re still seeing warnings about memory use, please let us know and we’ll be happy to troubleshoot with you.