Dev Mode users can now see variables used in gradients. Binding variables to gradients was also added to the plugin API so plugin developers can offer variables support out-of-the-box.

Two new AI features — quickly search through top Community files to find assets you need and increase the resolution and clarity of your images in just one click in the editor.

Figma Community Forum got a big makeover in January. It’s a great place to ask questions or share your thoughts.

If you’ve been waiting for more details to start planning your trip to Config 2025, now is the time. Azra Daniels, Director of Events at Figma, gives a first look at what the team is building for the community on both sides of the Atlantic. The conference will kick off on May 6 at Config Commons near Moscone Center in San Francisco, where you can grab the badge and meet other attendees. To avoid long registration lines, partner hotels will offer multiple check-in locations. 50+ sessions will take place in multiple tracks on May 7 and 8. The Maker Space will feature a dedicated stage where community leaders showcase their latest work. Config will continue in London the following week for a one-day event with 10 sessions.

The new Lovable and Builder​.io integration lets you turn Figma designs into full applications. Lovable is a full-stack AI software engineer and editing environment. It’s designed to let you quickly create and iterate on your projects so you can move from an idea to a real application, deployed live, without wrangling complex tools or environments. AI-Powered Figma to Code is Builder​.io​’s toolchain that leverages AI models to convert Figma designs into React, Vue, Svelte, Angular, HTML, etc code in real-time. It can even reuse your existing components in the output and use any styling library or system you need.

So, by using the integration, you can convert Figma mockups into code with Builder​.io and then open them in Lovable, where you can add new functionality or connect it to the real data from Supabase. Soon, you’ll be able to update your app in Lovable whenever designs change in Figma. AI will merge the design changes while keeping all your custom code intact. (Unrelated, this combo was most recommended in answers to this question about the best AI tool for turning designs into a website.)

Fons Mans now uses Figma mostly to translate ideas onto the screen quickly, then switches to a tool that lets him build or create the final product or visual. Cameron Moll also follows this approach.

It works really well when the designer is involved in the implementation. Figma is a fantastic tool for quickly exploring different directions, but after reaching an alignment, it’s time to polish the final version of the product, not its image. I was frustrated by wasting time whenever I spent hours prototyping an elaborate but disposable interaction in Figma. Modern AI tools make this final iteration even more accessible to less technical folks. That said, in most organizations, designers still can’t touch code — either that will change, or the final polish will still be happening in Figma for quite some time.

Hot take: ​“Figma’s reliance on craftsmanship design culture feels vulnerable in a world moving toward automation & commodification.” I’m very curious to see what the big theme of Config 2025 will be.

Jake Albaugh talks about how modern browsers have evolved beyond what most design tools can do: ​“While many designers and developers have been working within familiar constraints, browsers have undergone a quiet revolution. The web now supports features like container queries, advanced scoping and inheritance, and responsiveness to user preference. It’s gotten much more sophisticated in terms of color, typography, dynamic units, layouts, and animation. Yet so many young designers and developers I talk to as a Developer Advocate at Figma aren’t aware of these possibilities. We’re still operating within old paradigms instead of pushing the boundaries of what the browser can do.”

In this deck, brand studio Smith & Diction explains their process and shares recent projects. You might be familiar with their brand identity for Perplexity, but my first exposure to their work was through local Philadelphia projects for Elixr Coffee, BOK Building, and The Rail Park. Ridd recently interviewed Mike and Chara, and it’s an inspiring conversation on craft, love of the game, brand strategy, and standing out in 2025 and beyond.

Miggi shows three updates to frame presets in UI3: the first frame dropped onto a blank canvas will land at 0x0y coordinates; when clicking on the canvas to add a new frame, Figma will default to the size of the last-used frame; when using the frame tool, quick-add indicators will appear beside and between frames so you can quickly insert additional frames.

Yann-Edern Gillet reflects on his first year designing at Linear: ​“Experiencing imposter syndrome has taught me to accept feedback—both positive and constructive—with openness and to lean on my teammates for perspective and support. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s also a reminder that the work you’re doing matters. Over time, I’ve learned to reframe it as a driver for growth, reflection, and improvement, and that’s been one of the most rewarding parts of this journey.”

Moty Weiss shares his experience capturing and preserving brand consistency with AI illustrations. The idea of analyzing existing brand illustrations with ChatGPT to create a foundational prompt for Midjourney really stood out to me. The resulting illustrations adhere to the brand style and have a unique voice, looking very different from the AI-generated images flooding the internet. While they still need some work, the new tools are truly empowering: ​“While Midjourney’s results may still require final touches — such as vector conversion, line refinement, detail enhancement, and final polish from a professional illustrator — it represents a significant step toward independence for designers who struggle with illustration.”

The layers panel finally supports lots of nested frames or long layer names with horizontal scrolling.

A new update to Slides lets you bring slides from Figma into a deck with one click.

An overview of everything shipped this year. It’s a long list!

Choose a color, style (solid, dotted, or wavy), thickness, and offset of your underlines.

Dev Mode now suggests variables when the value matches a style, color, or size, even if it wasn’t specified in the design. The new color picker also moved in this direction, and now I want this principle to be applied whenever my values overlap with a style or variable. It should be easier both for designers and developers to use the right primitives.

Selecting a variable in Dev Mode now opens a pop-up panel that includes values, properties, aliases, collection information, and more. There is also a new view for all the variable collections used in the file. Watch a demo of all the new features.

A new libraries modal optimized for adding and browsing relevant libraries. Highlights of this redesign include a new recommended tab and overall improvements to performance and navigation.

A fully redesigned eyedropper for UI3 now supports color variables and styles! Rotate between color formats with the Tab key — previously, that could have been changed only in the color panel. Switch between picking the raw color value or a variable/​style with a Shift key or creating and applying a new color variable/​style by using the shortcut Command-Shift. See an in-depth demo from Ana.

This update is near and dear to my heart, as I talked about color formats and working around a lack of support for styles in an eyedropper back in 2023 at Config. Love that both features are now so straightforward to use!

A few small improvements to variables, the biggest being the ability to copy and paste (but not move) variables across collections and show their values on hover. Other updates improve the authoring experience by adding new variables under selection, tabbing through fields, and resizing columns. See a video demo from Chad Bergman or read the release notes.

These improvements are very welcome, but after a year of using variables, I still rely on a mix of random plugins for most organizational tasks. My not-so-short wishlist for Config 2025: moving variables between collections and libraries, seeing where they’re used, replacing one variable with another, detecting unused variables, reviewing deleted variables still in use, and suggesting variables based on the value. Alright, 2026 might be a better target.

Component properties can now be bound to variables, unlocking the ability to use translation strings in props. Learn how to bind them together in this video by Chad Bergman or this thread by Jacob Miller.

New tools for managing no longer needed projects by moving them to trash, recovering, or permanently deleting.

I covered October updates in the previous issue, but now you can watch the recording of the second episode of Release Notes with advocates Jake Albaugh and Kaitie Chambers.

Really well-made video tutorial explaining masks in Figma: ​“We answer questions such as: What is a mask? How does it work? How do you use it in Figma? We demonstrate advanced usage and share real examples from our projects.”

So much goodness in this update! 1) Figma now detects when a new font was installed locally and automatically adds it to the font picker, no refresh is required. 2) The missing fonts modal now groups font families for faster searching and lets you replace the font of a single text node, entire page, or all pages. 3) Set the color, shape (solid, dotted, or wavy), and thickness of text underlines. Plus, choose the underline offset from text and whether it skips ink. 4) Mix and match paragraph spacing or indentation in the same node.

The prototyping and variables modals are now resizable, giving you more screen space for setting up prototyping interactions and viewing the details for multiple actions.

The modal you use to swap instances of a component has been upgraded in UI3 and now matches the layers panel, with folder nesting and options for list and grid views.