Nikita Prokopov published a fantastic, well-researched essay about the state of menu icons in macOS Tahoe: ​“In my opinion, Apple took on an impossible task: to add an icon to every menu item. There are just not enough good metaphors to do something like that. But even if there were, the premise itself is questionable: if everything has an icon, it doesn’t mean users will find what they are looking for faster. And even if the premise was solid, I still wish I could say: they did the best they could, given the goal. But that’s not true either: they did a poor job consistently applying the metaphors and designing the icons themselves.”

I’m not into the ​“best of” collections, but Helena Zhang made some truly special and thoughtful picks. Love seeing the new icons for my local Philadelphia Art Museum made it into the list!

Dylan Field argues that AI will generate more of the short‑lived, simple artifacts in software and design, while humans will remain central for long‑lasting, high‑impact work where craft and intention matter most.

Big update to Figma navigation! The rollout seems to still be in progress, as I’m seeing it only in one of my accounts. If you aren’t seeing it yet, here is another quick demo from Zander.

“We’re introducing a new left navigation bar in Figma Design, Draw, and Dev Mode to make it easier to move between library assets, variables, and search. To help you get familiar, we added labels, which you can toggle anytime in the View menu. Edge-to-edge variables authoring experience. See everything at a glance with the new full screen view that spans the entire width of the browser.”

“Starting today, the Figma for Jira app supports webhooks, so teams can get instant design status updates like ​“Ready for Dev” directly in Jira tickets, with no admin setup required. Webhook support is enabled for newly linked design files, and we’re rolling it out to existing links soon.”

A fun tool to look back at 2025 activity in your busiest Figma files — see the people behind the pixels, who commented the most, your most and least busiest days of the year, replies, and debates.

Luis took on a noble goal of making a reliable UI kit for React Aria. I enjoy following his process even while I don’t use the actual UI library.

Miggi shows how to use the Cut tool like a pro.

Another cool Figma Draw technique from Miggi that I wasn’t aware of. Until now, I was achieving this effect in an old-school way by flattening a copy of the object and then adding an outside stroke.

In this video, Figma shows how you can use Figma Make to brainstorm and prototype new product features and ideas.