Prototyping with Variables Painfully Slow

Hey @wc-xym ,
Sorry for the trouble! This looks odd. I’ve checked in our backend, and we had a similar issue that’s been solved a few months ago. Is it happening on desktop app, browser or both?
Can you try to force-quit and open Figma to see if that helps?

I’d recommend you to reach out directly to the support team with a copy of your file: here
Our technical specialist can have a deeper look at it to see if we can replicate on our end.
Be sure to use your Figma account email, include a link to the file, and share it with support-share@figma.com. Thank you!

I figured out why the slowness occurs.

1. Create a component
2. Create an instance
3. Add interaction with variables to an instance → Prototype works fine
4. Turn the new instance into a component
5. create an instance from the new component → Prototype works but is extremely slow

The issue only occurs when you nest the instance with the prototype action in another component.

Do you still want to see the sample file?

Hey @wc-xym ,
Thank you for taking the time to have a look at it! Please reach out directly to the support team with a copy of your file: here
Our team can investigate further and see if we can replicate on our end. Thank you!

@wc-xym I tried your fix but my problem persists.

I got an issue in an onclick “change to” the transition was instant, but when adding setting variables in the same onclick the transition became laggy and delayed. (Each set variable seemed to add ~0.5s time to the delay)

Hi Gerard,

My apologies. I was articulating the cause behind the slowness in my response above. Anytime you add variable interactions and turn the design into a component, you will get slowness.

The only way I figured out how to resolve the slowness is to keep variable interactions on component instances as opposed to the components themselves.

Hope that helps.

W

I also experienced this issue, I hope they can fix it soon.
Otherwise, I will need to redo a large portion of my prototype with instances instead of components, as you said

Be great if this issue could escalated, some prototypes we are producing using variables are becoming unusable due to the response times.

Having this same issue. Please escalate…

Having this issue on multiple big files that where working just fine a few weeks ago, causing havoc now as I can not take anyone through the prototypes. Which is odd as a few weeks back there where no issues with these files. To undo the nested components now would take forever.

Please escalate.

Thanks for flagging. Could you please submit a case to the support team so they can investigate more?

Thanks,
Toku

Just a note, I am seeing exactly this same issue. I have a number of variables inside components, and it really slows down all parts of the whole prototype. Experimenting, I have seen that it is a bit better if I run the prototype inside a web browser than in Figma’s app. In iOS I have seen Safari seems to run it faster than chrome, and on my PC Edge runs it faster than chrome. But even in the browser it is clearly running slower than it should.

Really hoping there is a fix for this soon - I love variables and everything you can do with them, but not being able to have them inside components really will limit their usefulness…

This is also an issue for us. We’ve been encountering this for weeks. It makes conveying ideas to a global team of PMs, Stakeholders, and clients incredibly painful. Prototyping is basically unusable for us. Our team has submitted multiple tickets with no clear resolution.

For whatever reason, it feels faster now on my Laptop. Any use of variables on state only cause minor lags, it used to be seconds after every interaction.
On my android phone it feels decently fast, but on iPad nothing changed.

We have seen a huge improvement since the latest release on performance for prototypes using lots of variables, great work team Figma!

I’m still experiencing the issue. I’m on the latest version of Figma and it doesn’t look like my memory usage is too high (but I admit it’s not a simple prototype)

Hi there,

Do you know if this issue occurs only in your environment or if it’s happening for others as well? If it’s only happening with your file, could you try the following troubleshooting steps?

• Close any Figma tabs you’re not using.
• Browser: Force-quit and open Figma in a new browser window.
• Desktop App: Force-quit the Figma Desktop app and restart it. If the issue persists, try clearing the cache.

If the issue occurs for others too, could you reach out directly to the support team with a copy of your file: https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?

Thanks,
Toku

Hi there,

I’m the only one working on the file, so I can’t test if it’s happening to anyone else. I can try sharing the file – it’s pretty complex, but switching variables is very slow even when I simplify it.

An approach to no code using classic VMC. Id imagine this feature being forgotten in AI, and relinquished to dev-mode meta data. almost had it doing Procedures

My colleague and I are both having this problem with our respective prototypes even though we are using different design systems. Interactions are snappy enough when clicking from frame to frame, but whenever variables and variant changes are used, the performance is horrific. Like 5 seconds to update the screen.

Hi there, Thanks for flagging this issue.

As community support members mentioned before, if the basic troubleshooting steps haven't helped, we recommend submitting a bug report directly to our support team. They can then take a closer look at this issue and provide more specific assistance. You can submit a report from here.

When you submit, please include the following:

• Your Figma account email
• Share URL of  the example file and add  support-share@figma.com as an Editor to the file (this won't affect your billing at all) 
• A screen recording showcasing this behavior with the whole window in frame

Thank you for your cooperation!