LAUNCHED: Please show Variable's description in tooltip on hover

We also utilise descriptions and have no idea where it shows up, It used to be on hover for styles and also in the inspect panel

This feature has been invaluable to our team! Especially, when someone needs to know the hex code of a color value.

Vote this up ⬆️

This is a must have feature, I don’t even know how anybody can use variables for light/dark themes without an “on hover” tooltip. Would be even better if on hover you could see the theme conversions (like, see the color in the other themes).
Please Figma 🙏

Same. Slightly maddening. Please help.

Please fix this. Variables could be so powerful, but since Figma is missing basic features like these, it’s hard to go all in on the concept.

Yeah, variable descriptions are mostly useless without this feature. Needs a way to be more visible to users of our design system. Especially having number variables for things like gaps and spacing, would love to be able to utilize descriptions in this way to highlight when to use which numbers

Figma’s Adobification just began. a lot of features, but the essential doesn’t works.

Ok Variables is a beta and bla bla bla, but we need the basic.

The created the variables feature to sell Dev Mode.

My company is planning to change Figma by other tool, more stable.

Please fix this, variable descriptions are mostly useless without this feature.

It’s showing on Grid view but it should show on list view as well

I see the problem, and I understand it, but until this feature will be added, but In my opinion there si a beetter way to solve the confusion in the teams.

Instead of consuming the base color variables directly, you can create a semantic collection of variable aliases that point to the base variables. like: action-primary >>> red-100

This way you create a more scalable system where you can also easly change an alias.

A solid implementation is on the Radix Theme Figma file: https://www.figma.com/community/file/1280428825266545105

Big upvote on this 👍 This is not exclusive to Variables, descriptions for style colours are also in the same boat. I can’t imagine this is a hard thing to fix? Unless I’m missing something and it’s such an essential feature for design system usability.

Need this ASAP!

Hello there, Thank you for sharing your thoughts on variables!
Variables is currently in open beta, we are working on adding more features and improving the overall experience during this time.
We’re so excited to hear the community’s feedback here, so please don’t hesitate to vote! Your input is greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Tooltip description would be super useful

Yes i thought that there already was a hover showing the “descriptions” you named when creating a new style? Where has it gone? You need a way to quickly identify the description, especially when you name color or text styles using the norma generic naming convention ie. Heading 1, or Primary 300 etc. Otherwise what is the point of writing out a “description”?

Please fix this bug or add it is a feature. We are trying to apply primitive variables to our semantic variables and it’s taking so much longer because we don’t have this hover tooltip.

Urgent: Ideally it would show the value on hover
Nice to have: Show the referenced variables all the way down to the value

Vote this up plz ⬆️

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This can only be a bug - what else is the field in the variables for?
It would be so helpful for all users!

As a design system maintainer, the way that variables currently work for the end user make them worse than styles!

While not a critical bug, this impacts the usability of variables for the actual designers using the DS, so in my mind it’s quite important.

Hey All, thanks for your continued feedback and sorry for the lack of follow up here!

To be transparent, this is not necessarily a bug, but rather a current feature limitation because of how variables was initially built.

Now that variables is out of beta, we’ve followed up with the team on this, and they’re committed to improving variables from a quality standpoint. This is at the top of our list, so keep an eye out on our future releases and stay tuned!

Yes please, would love to see this feature gap closed so we can rely on the description helping our designers in their files. Upvote 👍

Thanks for the update. I’m glad to hear that the team is prioritizing this. It’s just been a bit frustrating and defeats the purpose to have a description field when it’s not shown anywhere.

Agreeing with those who have commented above, it’d be greatly beneficial for us to see the variable description in a tooltip when hovering over the swatch, like it is with style’s description. This is the only thing that’s keeping us from migrating the solid color palette from styles to variables.

Exactly. Why have a description if it doesn’t show up when needed?

@dvaliao Any updates on this? It’s such a simple thing that will hugely improve the use of variables for library users!

Hi, any updates on this?