User Preference to include or exclude object selection in undo

When I undo, I want undo only changes that I’ve made to a document, not what I’ve selected. I find the existing behavior to be unintuitive and counter to basically all other applications.

However, I realize some people like it the way it is, so we can we get a user option to only include document changes in Undo?

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Hello,

When I undo in Figma (history), it goes the whole way back though all the selections and edits, while I’ve never seen any app that considers selections as edits. This feels odd, and it takes much more time to actually undo real edits.

I’d recommend to apply undo only to actions such as “text edit”, “delete”, “move”, “group”, “create”, “color change”, “paste”, etc. But not to simple layer selection.

Thank you.

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Agreed, it makes undo incredibly frustrating, and means i have to hit undo an unreasonable amount of times, especially if i am selecting my way into a nested autolayout. i just had to hit undo 8 times to undo an action i did to a complex component because i needed to select thru 7 nested autolayouts in order to get to the last action i just did. SELECTION IS NOT AN ACTION

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Please add this option! It adds 2x clicks/actions to my stack every day, all day.

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I really want this.
Both methods have their own advantages.
Personally, the current way makes too many small mistakes. So painful.

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I am frustrated with Figma right now. I want to undo a last action of resizing something however ctrl + z doesn’t seem to be working the same way as before. I can’t now see what undo’s I am doing based on this. I just want to be able to work the way I used to before. So it should be a preference thing not just a change Figma thinks will make everyones workflow better.

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It is definitely very annoying and frustrating to be “undoing” clicks. If this is a loved behavior, at least please let us set a preference so that item selections are not considered undoable / redoable actions.

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I was asked why I prefer to have selection included in the undo history. Here are my reasons:

  1. If you click in the wrong spot while doing a complex multi-layer selection, you don’t need to start over in Figma (drives me insane in other apps).

  2. Moving around the pages and canvas selecting different frames, then being able to easily go back if necessary.

So both of these are obviously about selection/navigation. They are not really a part of a regular undo flow.

This suggestion therefore is not really about “we need an option for that” but more about “let’s get rid of this feature but keep it as an option in case someone wants it”.

With these things in mind, I believe there is an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. A popular suggestion on the forum is Quickly go to last visited page and back. It’s pretty much what I currently use Undo history for sometimes.

So I’m thinking: why not combine selection/navigation history into one thread and separate it from the undo history? This way workflows I described would still be available at all times without the need to enable/disable any options. And navigation wouldn’t disrupt the undo history. The navigation/selection back/forward actions should obviously be available with shortcuts and probably with the UI buttons too.

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This issue is singularly so annoying and bizarre that I am in the process of switching away from Figma.

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Was this ever implemented in Figma? This is one of the major reasons that keeps my team from moving to Figma since the current way (including layer/object selections in undo) makes the application too difficult to work in.

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Is there a way we can manually turn off selections as edits while undoing?

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I just starting using Figma a few days ago, and this is one thing I found super frustrating. I found my self undoing multiple times because of selections. Specially in prototyping, when the majority of my selections was to view interactions, and having to undo about a dozen times just to undo one actual edit. It would be great if we had an option to not include selections in undo.

This reminds me of when Adobe changed the Free-Transform a few years back, where you didn’t have to use Shift to constraint proportions (trying to use mobile patterns in desktop). What a mess it was until they finally gave users the option to use it how it had always been.

New Figma user here. Not to sound too dramatic but I find this bizarre! :slight_smile: Sometimes I undo 10 times just to get to reverse the desired action. Experienced Figma users might have gotten used to it but this is definitely not according to expectations set by all other tools (not just design). My second expectation was to find a setting to toggle between undo containing everything and undo only actions. I see a lot of people here had the same 2 expectations. C’mon Figma, make our lives a bit easier :wink:

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For now I really really really need this feature than other features

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This is so essential, please fix. Or make it optional at least, so @Gleb could keep his workflow.

So 2 years and nothing? This should change. Make it optional?

My main issue with this is that if for some reason I need to go WAY back… undo a ton of actions to go back to a previous state if I change my mind on a big sweeping change… then I run out of undos really quickly and can’t go as far back as I needed.

Welcome to the monopoly world of UI Design Tools :alien:

So, will we get any update on this? This is so annoying. @Gleb That’s nice if it suits your workflow, but that’s obviously not what your users want.