Make Annotations visible to everyone

The new annotations and measurements feature is really great and helpful, but it’s basically useless because visitors can’t see it without a full seat.

This is especially problematic when you’re working on projects with hundreds of people, as it’s pointless to pay for a full seat for everyone who only needs to glance at screens and concepts occasionally.

So, please add the option to set annotations and measurements visibility to „everyone,“ even for visitors without a full seat.

I was so happy to see annotations in the Editor view this week, but the value quickly disappeared after realizing that only other editors or team members with dev mode could see them.

Another misstep by Figma, who have got into a pattern of releasing much requested functionality, only to lock making it actually usable behind paywalls that are just too high for the majority of businesses. 

The developers who have dev mode on our team get great value from it, but we have so many other team members (PM, QAs, stakeholders, etc) who review designs. Paying an extra $25/mo/person just for them to see the annotations is extortionate. 

Please Figma, review this policy. At the very least, allow members with the new “Colab” role to be able to see annotations.

I came to this forum as a first time poster.. just to say this. I understand access but the trust of useful features being blocked behind paywalls is concerning. The success of these types of prototyping tools was that they are able to be shared with “non” designers. Also as someone else said.. devs are expensive.. they already need a lot of tooling.. their time is expensive.. asking an engineering manager to pay for a historical “design” tool is laughable. The engineers that use dev mode would just write their own code so now they are paying to see my specs. Please don’t be so greedy, it’s showing. To make this post productive.. if you won’t consider making annotations open to all.. could you at least visually treat “comments” similar to the way you’re approaching annotations.

I’m frustrated because I just spent time annotating and understanding this new feature.. I expected to lead a mtg with my team using this new feature.. only to realize it was not available to the team during the demo.

I was so excited when I saw the popup announcing this feature. I immediately started adding annotations with notes/questions for various stakeholders across my file. I sent them the link to the file, waited for feedback…

...and very quickly realized that none of them could actually see the annotations I’d left because they require a full seat to view. 😐

So now I have to move all the details from the annotations into the old annotation components I was using, which aren’t as elegant or adaptable as the Figma ones, but at the very least can be seen by all the people who need the information in them, none of whom have or need the rights of a paid seat.

Figma, PLEASE make these annotations visible to anyone with access to the file. If you want to paywall creating them, sure, but without the ability to be seen by the majority of the people in the file they’re absolutely useless.

Hey All, thank you for your honest feedback! 

We’ve updated this topic into a feature request and edited the title for clarity. We’ll pass this onto our team for future consideration. 

wdym? others can’t see my annotations? that’s cruel! 

I just spent an hour adding annotations to my designs and circulating specs with my team, only to learn that my team couldn’t see them. If annotations are solely for me, then this should be more clear in the Figma interface. My managers have View seats, and do not need Edit or Dev seats. 

As of this moment, I am completely confused about who sees annotations, what seat they need, and what the intent is. The annotations button appears in the regular interface view, which leads me to believe that it’s unrelated to Dev mode’s annotations.

This is very frustrating. ​

​@dvaliao Thank you. Is the feature request a link that people can track and/or vote on?

arch_annette wrote:

I just spent an hour adding annotations to my designs and circulating specs with my team, only to learn that my team couldn’t see them. If annotations are solely for me, then this should be more clear in the Figma interface. My managers have View seats, and do not need Edit or Dev seats. 

As of this moment, I am completely confused about who sees annotations, what seat they need, and what the intent is. The annotations button appears in the regular interface view, which leads me to believe that it’s unrelated to Dev mode’s annotations.

This is very frustrating. ​

 

I just did this same exact thing and now I regret doing it. It was by accident that I discovered they were only viewable to editors and PAID plans. Figma, please come up with a different marketing strategy for your subscription service, as limiting your new features is lowering user opinions of your product. 

The more you implement dubious functions, the less trustworthy you are. Soon it will be impossible to open a link without a subscription. What is happening after the merger with Adobe is some kind of nightmare.

And yes. I completely forgot. Also implement a creative cloud and then the product will definitely become the same 💩 as all the others.

I totaly agree with the fact that annotation is the most greedy functionnolity we have see so far. We understand you need to consolidate your business model, but such a thing, knowing how bad the comments work (you can”t copy pas them along with a screen for example), I, like many others here, need this functionnality to be visible for standard viewers. this is a functionnality for communicating more clearly on our daily changes.

We already pay a lot for a seat. This is not asking for this feature to be used by free members, juste we ask to make them VISIBLE.

So please figma team, make an urgent update to  let everyone use this feature.

please make the future quick this time, please.

I concur with this. The feature should be able available to all. As Product Owners, BAs and Dev need to be able to see annotations. Not all have edit role. Can we please get this included for reviewer role?

+1 yes, figma annotations viewable to all!!! <3

+100 Totally agree. I really love the new annotations but as mentioned by others the usefulness and value is very limited if only designers or developers can see them. reviewers and other stakeholders shouldn’t need dev seats. 

Careful Figma, you’re going the way of Adobe. 
I feel like you’re very focused on internal teams and forgetting many, many people use Figma in agency settings and need to share view-only links with clients. 
Clients absolutely need to see annotations — or at least give the option in the sharing settings.

Another up for making Annotations visible for everyone. This is such a bummer and I really don’t understand this decision of Figma 

+1 yes, figma annotations viewable to all!

+1 for allowing annotations to be visible for all 🙏🏻

+1 for allowing annotations to be visible for all 👹

Fully agree - this is actually a feature I’ve been waiting for years for, but is useless since it requires paid seats. This feature is dead in the water unless all users can see them.

This is actually why I don’t use them, I hope this changes so it brings better collaboration in Figma files

I just spent 2 hours setting up annotations for devs AND OTHER STAKEHOLDERS only to learn that the second group cannot see it?!

Are you seriously expecting dozens of occasional users to get dev license just because of this?

Well, two hours wasted, back to adding them manually as components. It’s so sad to see Figma slowly turning into Adobe… this is what happens when you have a monopoly unfortunately.

After spending two hours setting up detailed annotations, I learned that people with Viewer licenses do not see them.

Annotations are for explaining non-obvious behavior to devs and others including occasional users. While devs are the primary audience, in large enterprise settings (which segment I assume is Figma’s primary source of revenue) usually there’s a large number of stakeholders who are occasionally involved in conversations. It is infeasible to get a dev or editor seat to each person loosely involved in the project just because it’s needed for a convenience feature once a quarter.

We’re back to adding annotations manually, as overlaid components.