On Drag not working properly when prototyping

Yes, I find the drag behaviour on interactions very un-reliable too. Most of the time it does not work, occasionally it does. Would be great if this could be improved, as can be very useful for prototypes.

I have also had the same experience. I used a few examples from YT to create a draggable payment card management prototype. But the experience is inconsistent.

+1. This needs to work!

For me is not working on mobile devices… really annoying, I had a presentation with a client and preview works, but when you try to mirror it or access it through the phone… drag doesn’t work… @support_team @Figma_Support

I am having the same problem-I have to drag several times before the drag interaction on my prototype works. Because I use prototypes to show the interaction dynamics I would like my dev team to build, this is dissapointing. @support_team @figma_support This is a core interaction we need to use for any mobile prototype, what are the solutions here? It looks like this has been a know issue for a year, and I’m hoping you have some insight on how best to make a drag interaction function properly.

Hi everyone, thanks all for reaching out to the community!
As the topic is dated from 2022, it would be great to have new details on what’s happened on your end now, so we can investigate which issues you encounter.

Can you please give more details of what you see on your end? (a quick video recording, and a copy of your file if you are able to share it publicly. Otherwise, I’d recommend you to reach out directly the support team, so they can investigate further as it could be different issues here: https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/requests/new)

@Marilee_Sweeney2 : I checked in our backend that our team is currently investigating your issue, and waiting more information from you. Please check your inbox, for your reference, the ticket number is: #850663

Thank you!

Thank you Celine, I will follow up with them. Is this something that Figma has fixed?

To be transparent, this needs to be investigated further. I’ve checked in our current bug reports, and we are not aware of this issue as we don’t have any ongoing bug report about the On Drag interaction on mobile device issue. Thank you for flagging this!

I have the same issue. It works when I play the prototype on my Macbook but on mobile only the drag interaction on the first slide works.

I’m sure it is a bug. It sometimes works (with a lot of tries). And I have two sliders that have the exact same basic structure with different content and a different number of slides and one works (smaller one with 3 slides) but the other (larger one with 8 slides) doesn’t.

I reached out to support. Would be great if you can fix this. It is a pretty essential prototyping feature.

Hey Ole! Thanks for flagging this. Our support team is investigation your issue, can you please check your inbox? For your reference, the ticket number is #854105.

Yep, facing the same issue on mobile app mirroring.
At first, duplicating and rewiring the prototype seemed to solve it. But then it started to do that same thing. Not sure what’s causing this.

I am having this exact same issue. Drag interaction is just not working at all. It is actually impossible to create a carousel interaction. What is going on?

I was seeing small glitches yesterday and it’s worse today. I’m doing user testing on a prototype and the wonky behavior could impact my tests.

Hey @Josiah_Gatlyn, thanks for reaching out. As a workaround, can you try uninstalling and reinstalling the app to see if it will solve the issue? If this doesn’t help, please reach out to the support directly so they can investigate it your issue: here

@Jen_Stein, this is another issue not related to the topic. As a best practice in the forum, I’d recommend you to create another topic.
For visibility, GPUs have known bugs and may cause rendering glitches when using Figma. Please also reach out to the support directly here for help: here and, we also recommend you to check the Figma browser requirements, here’s our guide: here . Thank you for your understanding!

Same issue when dragging, it takes like 2-6 times to get it to work. I think it might be an issue with vertical scrolling where if you don’t perfectly swipe horizontally it doesn’t register.

I’m adding to this that my prototype for tablet also has two vertical scrolling experiences that our leadership is requiring. In my design I’m experiencing the same issue with drag not working realistically on the image carousel when I test in tablet. It sometimes works after dragging over and over. I want to second Austin’s comment about the vertical scrolling element as a possible problem. But I will need a way to keep the vertical scrolling AND have a realistic drag experience between images.

Hi there! i have the same problem. It’s not working on the phone app, neither on the prototype preview on my laptop screen. I often need a “swipe” action (not an horizontal scrolling) on mobile apps mockups, and the drag interaction doesn’t work correctly…

Hi, guys. Have the same problem, and my assumption is that drag/swipe function in Figma is not that sensitive as in real life. It means it will work every time if you swipe a bit longer than you would do in real app. In reality your swipe movement is fast and “short”, and in Figma you need to drag your finger a bit longer, that is it. Try it.
But of course it doesn’t solve the problem, as you can not use it in unmoderated testings 😦

Hi @Celine_Figma, I wanted to know if the developers managed to reproduce the problem?

I noticed that the problem occurs when creating a new component with variants. Adding a trigger on drag between 3 variants, the transition does not work properly. With swipe left, it is 1->2->3, but when I want to go back to 1 it is 3->2->3->2.

As a component for testing, I used a component created a year ago. On which the drag trigger works correctly.

Hi Piotr,
Unfortunately not, and I have checked internally, there is no current bug report about it.
(I’ve checked some previous tickets that the community filled out to reach out to the support team here. As some of them are dated since 2022 and 2023, I can see on our backend it was due to a wrong setting and not a bug, such as Marilee_Sweeney’s issue for instance and that’s been fixed. And for some tickets, we didn’t get a reply from the user to investigate it further)

Thus, as it can be another specific issue, please reach out directly to the support team with a copy of your file and a quick video recording: here
This will help our team to better visualise the issue and try to replicate it.
Be sure to use your Figma account email, include links to the file, and share it with support-share@figma.com so they can take a closer look. Thank you for your understanding!

Hi @Celine_Figma
My mistake was that I prepared the prototype wrong. I used the drag transition on the screens, not on the layer. Originally I had screen 1 connected to screen 2 connected to screen 3. And when I wanted to use drag it did not work correctly.
It should be a layer in screen 1 connected to screen 2, a layer in screen 2 connected to screen 1, and screen 3. Then it works correctly.

Hey Piotr,
Thanks for letting me know. Glad to hear you have found a fix!

I have the same issue as described in this post: my On Drag interactions work fine when I drag with my mouse on desktop, but not when I swipe on mobile. Only when I very deliberately and slowly “press and hold, then drag” on mobile, it works reliably. But a quick swipe, the way I normally swipe, never (or very rarely) triggers the On Drag interaction.

I am prototyping a carousel, so this is a vital interaction and it’s going to add lots of noise to my research results (I am expecting lots of comments like “swiping doesn’t work”…).

Edited to add: I’m using the On Drag interaction to “Change to” another component variant. I am using 2 On Drag interactions at the same time on each frame and you cannot specify a direction (I’ve done it exactly as in this tutorial). Maybe that is why it’s not working - but it is working on desktop so it would be a strange bug. For “Navigate to”, my On Drag interactions are working fine on mobile, but there I can set it to “Push” and specify a direction.

Hi there! This looks odd as your interaction is working on desktop app and not in the browser. I’d also suggest you to reach out directly to the support team and please include links to the file affected, and share it with support-share@figma.com so they can try to replicate it, by filling this form: here. Thank you!

Thanks @Celine_Figma unfortunately I can’t replicate it in a new file and I cannot share my design file due to confidentiality :(.