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Question

Ability to add/remove/re-order items in an auto-layout component

  • April 8, 2024
  • 18 replies
  • 1500 views

Yezgi_Baha

This is a reference to a topic that was closed without resolution:

I can’t express how frustrating it is when a designer has to detach one of your components simply to add a tab in-between existing tabs or a dropdown option above existing ones.

When I build a component I shouldn’t have to create 10 hidden layers as placeholders to make sure that the component works for a design with 2 dropdown options or 10 options. I should be able to include 1-2 items in the component and let designers add/remove more from there.

Lack or re-ordering capability combined with the lack of add/remove capability for items in an auto-layout component means our components continue to get detached shortly after use. It defeats the purpose of maintaining a component library. It becomes a template library instead.

18 replies

Michael_Wandelmaier

Couldn’t agree more. This is the single biggest blocker to using Figma design systems for larger, more complex components and patterns.


Dorothy Ryan
  • New Member
  • 1 reply
  • March 18, 2025

Can we vote this up? This is a really annoying limitation of components. 


Yezgi_Baha
  • Author
  • New Member
  • 1 reply
  • April 18, 2025

@Figma_Team any inputs?


leeharrisonmellor

This is a really annoying aspect of Figma. It’s a major blocker for complex components. For example, I have an RTE organism that sits within several components. The RTE contains rows of different heading/type/bullet/list styles that the designers need to be able to change the order of to build designs/prototypes. Having to detach the components creates havoc when you then try and create variations of the designs, relying on variables to resize/recolour the components.

How do other users deal with this headache?

 


Chris_Gatland
  • New Participant
  • 7 replies
  • April 30, 2025

Agreed 100%.  I frequently end up having to detach my own instances because the alternative would take too much repetitive editing.

Imagine the scenario - you have a 7 item menu and you realise you need to add a new item at the top.  To achieve this, you either need to detach and hack the instance or you have to rewrite all of the text strings and re-assign icons to every list item (assuming you even have another dummy item at the bottom to unhide).

I pretty often need to re-order menu items between design concept and final spec as the product evolves.  It should be a trivial task.

 


Gerlof
  • New Member
  • 4 replies
  • May 1, 2025

This would be so great to have


Lee Costic
  • New Member
  • 3 replies
  • May 12, 2025

This is a reference to a topic that was closed without resolution:

Reorder objects in an autolayout component instance. Allow for order overrides. Allow users to reorder (drag or arrow) objects inside a component instance that has auto-layout on it. Especially useful for components that have repeated elements, such as a dropdown menu or a group of form inputs, navigation. This would be much quicker than manually changing each of the elements in-between where the current element is and where the new position is. Or for users that don’t have patience and break…

I can’t express how frustrating it is when a designer has to detach one of your components simply to add a tab in-between existing tabs or a dropdown option above existing ones.

When I build a component I shouldn’t have to create 10 hidden layers as placeholders to make sure that the component works for a design with 2 dropdown options or 10 options. I should be able to include 1-2 items in the component and let designers add/remove more from there.

Lack or re-ordering capability combined with the lack of add/remove capability for items in an auto-layout component means our components continue to get detached shortly after use. It defeats the purpose of maintaining a component library. It becomes a template library instead.

 

Agree with all comments here, I run into this at least once a week, very frustrating limitation. (I initially thought this was just a setting our component library architects had forgotten to enable, but no...it’s an actual Figma limitation!)

Thoughts on this ​@seni ​@dvaliao @Celine_ ?


Sebastian_Holzki

Has there been any movement on that front? It’s a big limitation for design systems and using them


Kevin_Voller
  • New Member
  • 3 replies
  • May 22, 2025

+1 – This would be a great feature. In theory it could be implemented as a component property, controllable both in the canvas area and in the properties panel where it’d be reflected – drag and drop to reorder maybe?


Jessica12
  • New Member
  • 4 replies
  • May 23, 2025

Running into this problem right now in our design system. It would be so much better if I could just reorder in the Asset rather than breaking it to do so.


Mark Bender
  • New Member
  • 1 reply
  • July 17, 2025

I’d like to add my voice to those asking for this feature.  Seems like it should be pretty easy -- Figma already supports this given I’m rearranging / adding / removing auto-layout items outside of a component.  I understand you’d want to be able to turn this on or off, as I wouldn’t want to accidentally be rearranging elements inside a component when attempting to drag the component.  But maybe I can designate a particular type of “list” auto-layout, that lets me add / edit / rearrange / delete an array of whatever child element is inside that list component? 


Emma_Gunnar
  • New Member
  • 1 reply
  • October 8, 2025

Please add this, the ability to rearrange without detaching is critical for scaling design systems/promoting adherence. 


jamestroutman
  • New Member
  • 1 reply
  • October 8, 2025

Please add this feature!


Dominick Miller

This would be a very helpful feature for our team to more effectively manage the designs.


Tyler Carolan
  • New Member
  • 2 replies
  • October 8, 2025

This feature would be really helpful, please add it!


Marcus Ruether
  • New Member
  • 1 reply
  • October 8, 2025

Implementing this would solve a massive frustration for our team.


Shawna_Sayar
  • New Member
  • 1 reply
  • October 8, 2025

Can’t express how important something like this would be - please add


Urmika Banerjee

Please add this feature  , it will be so helpful!!