Figma tips and tricks

I started this document a while ago for the design team I’m on at Asurion, but I thought it would be helpful for others on the interwebs as well. Nothing here is advanced or anything, but it’s a help repo if nothing else.

Have more to add? Have questions? Hit me up on the twitter.

• If coming from Sketch, you’ll be used to using groups. Try to not use groups. Use frames instead. Frames can function as masks, artboards, groups, or stacks. Groups in Figma are only used for categorization, and are not as functional as a Frame will be. Most of my files have few groups and hundreds of frames.

Some differences between frames in Figma and groups in Sketch:

• Can be placed inside of each other (mainly used for constraints)
• Can have their clipping of children turned on and off
• Can have visible child elements that are constrained but live outside of the border
• Can have their own layout grids, columns, and rows
• Can have layer effects which will be applied to all children, unless overridden.

• You can change a group to a frame by selecting it, and then clicking the dropdown menu in the top right of your screen.

• When resizing a frame, hold cmd if you want to ignore your constraints relative to the edge you are resizing.
• Hold cmd key to quickly select nested layers, rather than double clicking
• Keyboard shortcuts are game-ified in Figma, and you can see which one’s you’ve used, not used, by clicking on the ? in the lower left corner and selecting “Keyboard Shortcuts”

• When a text layer is selected, pressing the return/enter key will allow you to quickly edit it
• You can change your shift nudge to 8px instead of 10, by going here:

• The desktop app is faster and removes some of the conflicts that opening files in a browser will cause. It can be downloaded here: https://www.figma.com/downloads/
• Sharing links to files is nice, but with the desktop app, it’s annoying. To share a link to to a file that will open in the desktop app, right click on the tab and select “Copy Desktop URI”

• This extension by Fabrizio Rinaldi opens all Figma web links in the the desktop app: https://www.fabriziorinaldi.io/openinfigma/
• You can navigate between tabs by pressing cmd + (a number). For example if I have 4 tabs open cmd 1 will go the first, cmd 2, to the second, and so on.
• You can disable the layers and inspector panel by pressing cmd + \
• You can navigate between pages by pressing page up, page down, or fn ⬇️ / fn ⬆️
• Cmd + Shift + arrow keys will resize an element by your nudge pixel increment.
• You can switch to outlines mode by pressing cmd + Y. This is really helpful when building out components, as it will show you the frame outlines and constraints clearly.
• Holding shift when defining constraints allows you to select multiple constraints, such as left & right or top & bottom. It also works for deselection.

• Masks in Figma are backwards from Photoshop, Illustrator, and Sketch. Instead of placing a mask on top of all of the elements you want masked, you need to place it on the bottom. Also, masks do not show their background color as they do in Sketch. They will only mask siblings, so you can group elements to contain your mask.
• Rename layers by pressing cmd + r. When in the renaming mode, you can press tab or shift + tab to rename other laters quickly.
• To bulk rename layers, select the layers you want to rename, and then hit cmd + r. You’ll be presented with the bulk rename overlay, where you can define sequences, find and replace strings, and do some other crazy cool things.

• If a layer ends with a number, duplicating it will add a .1 suffix to the layer name. For example, “rectangle 2” when duplicated will be called “rectangle 2.1”. “rectangle” when duplicated will just be called “rectangle”
• You can align layers by holding control + cmd + arrow keys.
• Zooming in and out can be accomplished by:tapping “z” and drawing a box, or tapping “z” holding alt and clicking to zoom out, pressing the + and — keys, scrolling the mousewheel while holding cmd, or using the trackpad pinch and zoom.
• You can copy all layer styles from one element to another by pressing cmd + shift + c, cmd + shift + v. This works for text too.
• You can copy an individual layer attribute by selecting that attribute and pressing cmd c + cmd v

• Opacity can be changed by pressing number on the keypad when an object is selected. For example 4 = 40% opacity, 3 = 30%, 0 = 100%… etc. Pressing a number 2x quickly, will define to 55% for example.
• You can select the hex input field and shift + up/down arrow to move through hex values.

• When a component is selected, you can quickly jump to the master by selecting “go to master component” in the right hand side properties panel.
• Components will be put in folders with one another by adding “/” to the name of the component. For example “icon/exit” and “icon/back-arrow” will be placed in a folder with one another, while “icon-exit” would not.

• Components can be used in boolean groups, e.g. union, subtracts, etc, and will still retain their link to the master component.
• Sub-layers of boolean groups can have constraints applied to them, which will then flow up to the next parent frame.

I’m demonstrating here that a component inside of another component, which has been union’ed with each other, still keeps constraints instead of acting like a flat svg.

• Figma files can be live-embedded in tweets, Dropbox paper documents, Jira (with the integration), Medium posts, and other websites. All changes are retained, though the viewer limit does seem to max out at around 50–100. 👇 Here’s one of the Tesla Model 3 UI that I did a while back.

• While files are auto-saved, annotated versions of files can be added by pressing cmd + option/alt + s. This is great for team libraries to make sure everyone knows what you changed.
• Flip layers horizontally by pressing shift + h and flip vertically by pressing shift + v
• If you’ve duplicated your text layers with the same name you can delete the layers name and it will rename itself to the current string value of the text layer. Here’s where I got that tip: SRC

• When multiple objects are selected, you can use the “Tidy Up” tool that will show up in the lower right corner to give your objects an equidistant distribution

• After Tidying up those elements, you can click and drag on the handles to change the distance, or you can type in an increment in the properties panel to rearrange them manually. Note: Holding Shift while dragging will make your distribution snap to your large move increment.

• Also, you can make one element larger/smaller while keeping the same distribution by selecting the magenta circle in the center of the element and resizing it.

• To keep the proportions changeable for future use, be sure to group the elements that you are tidying up. When that group is selected in the future, you’ll be able to move things around more easily. Need more control or want different distributions? Make groups in your groups.

• It’s super easy to create arcs. Just make an ellipse and then click and drag on the small blue circle icon on the right side.

More to come!

Other great resources for learning Figma:

Design System Course in Figma by Design+Code

Figma

Figma Design

How to streamline your UI/UX workflow with Figma

Component architecture in Figma

Is your team trying out Figma? I’m starting to toy with the idea of teaching teams how to get started. Let me know if you’re interested.

I’m a Product Designer located in Nashville. Check out my work on my website. I occasionally tweet, but most of the time I spend time with my wife. She’s a lifestyle blogger and an incredible lady. Also, Hondo, our Bernese mountain dog is pretty cool too. I was not paid by Figma to write this, though I have collaborated with them in the past.