Prototype overlays are not visible when using observation mode

Totally agree with @Roberto! I would love to use this feature but since I only see half of the prototype it is currently not valuable for us.

This is still an issue nearly a year later, can the folks at Figma please look into this?

Push

We really need overlays in observer mode. Right now it’s practically useless for remote testing.

Agreed, this is a much needed feature when you present a prototype.

I accidentally noticed the overlays weren’t showing when spotlighting myself while presenting a prototype to some colleagues.

Luckily it wasn’t while presenting to customers. I had to resort to sharing my screen using Teams, which is far from ideal.

Saying that, adding audio would complete the functionality of presenting prototypes so I created an idea post for that → Enable audio while prototyping

Please fix this. My team and client are distributed. We always meet online and my prototype have entire screens just to show an overlay, which already exists as a stand-alone component.

This is hugely needed, PLEASE FIX THIS!!! Thanks.

I am somewhat shocked this was reported in mid-2021 and is still an open issue in 2023. My team and I have been struggling with this for ages, and it’s a real handicap when presenting a design to clients and user testing. Please address it ASAP; thanks!

Hello, everyone! I encountered the same issue and noticed that it only occurred when the overlay was triggered by an instance. As a temporary solution, I detached the instance, which allowed me to view the overlay in observation mode.

I hope this can help! 👋

Hi Figma Team! I am also struggling with that problem when observing a user when opening an overlay triggered within an instance. The workaround for [lucadigitale] is smart, but it would by nice, when you could observe things you actually also see, when interacting with the prototype.

Hope this issue can be closed soon.

Thanks anyway for that nice tool I realy enjoy working with.

Hello, this is still an issue.
Anybody with a viable workaround ?
It’s true that it’s a real problem with clients.

@Figma team ?

Just wanted to push this because it’s still an issue I’m facing which is terrible for remote usability testing when I need to see what’s being clicked. Team Figma, please look into this!

Its 3 yrs later and still an issue. Is it safe to assume this will never be fixed? Its unfortunate to test prototypes with users when you can’t accurately follow what they are doing.

Hey @Brian_Mila, so sorry for the delay in providing a fix!

To be transparent, this is a long-standing bug that our prototyping team has been trying to fix without much success.

What we’ve discovered is that if an editor changed something in the file BEFORE the observing client began observing them, the changes desynchronize for the observer. We’ve been trying to create a solution that bridges this gap, but it has obviously taken longer than we originally anticipated.

The best, temporary solution we can suggest is ensuring that everyone has refreshed the file and no editors are actively making changes while presenting with others in observation mode.