Temporarily hiding selection outlines

Yes, please!

surprised this hasnā€™t been implemented yet ā€“ want & need it tbh :zap:

hopefully they can incorporate it :leaves:

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All: Make sure youā€™ve voted for this idea. 3 years later and this popular feature is still not implementedā€¦ I wonder if there is some technical issue getting in the way due to the in-browser context (pressing a keyboard key causes conflicts). @Gleb any thoughts on how difficult this would be to implement?

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That should be a basic feature, every major software does this and it should be very easy to implement, like a temporary esc shortcut

They already have a mechanic to hide the outlines when you make changes to objects. So it should be easy. I can also make a plugin for this and you can set it to run via a shortcut if you are on Mac.

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Indeed one would think it should be easy, right?

Hey Iā€™ll take the plugin :slight_smile: Why only on Macs? On Windows there is a utility called Autohotkey (https://www.autohotkey.com/). Would it be able to utilize the plugin?

Are you able to configure it to run a plugin?I know a way by running search and entering the plugin name but itā€™s not very smooth so I donā€™t know if anyone even uses or wants it this way. Do you know a better way or is this method ok?

Sorry I might be confused. Were you talking about making a Figma plugin to do this? If so, why would it not work on Windows?

Iā€™m talking about configuring a shortcut to run the plugin. The plugin would work everywhere but I doubt it would be convenient on Windows unless you can add a shortcut with AHK. So Iā€™m asking how do you set a shortcut to run a plugin with AHK?

AHK can do various actions on any hotkey or hotkey combination, even within only specific apps: How to Write Hotkeys | AutoHotkey v2

Initially I thought the Figma plugin you were thinking of would have to be run manually via the traditional way, but then would be running ā€œinvisiblyā€ in the background and listening for a given key (which could be user-defined) that would hide the selection outlines, etc.

But if you can launch the plugin via a user-defined keyboard shortcut then even better :slight_smile:

Thatā€™s not really feasible in Figma due to the limitations of the API.

Yes, but you can only configure said shortcut on Mac. I understand the capabilities of AHK and as far as I know the only way it could run a plugin is: 1. Press Ctrl + P to open search. 2. Type the name of the plugin. 3. Press Enter. This is an ok process but sounds a bit annoying having this 1 second delay of AHK doing all these actions every time you want to run it.

Oh, btw I realized something: do you want to hide outlines and then continue changing the objects while the outlines are hidden? The only way a plugin can function is by deselecting everything and then getting the selection back. This means you canā€™t edit objects while the outlines are hidden because you donā€™t have selection. You can already automate this with AHK and on macOS with BTT much easier: just press Esc to deselect everything and then press Cmd/Ctrl + Z to get selection back. No need for a plugin.

Ok I see.

Yeah, having to do all that would defeat the purpose, as the idea is to stay in flow, with minimal effort/disruption for the user.

If a plugin cannot operate in the background in Figma, one would always have to launch it and close it and launch it againā€¦ which is too much work.

To answer your question: It would be ideal if when the outlines, handles, etcā€¦ are hidden, the selection could still be edited.

But if not, at least we would be able to easily hide the selection outlines, handles, etc. , see how things look, and then edit again once the selection outlines, handles, etc. are showing again. We definitely donā€™t want to have to manually re-select things again.

I found a video on Youtube describing this feature (in Adobe Illustrator):

Yeah letā€™s hope they add it to Figma

In Illustrator itā€™s command+h. cā€™mon man.