When working in a branch, if you’ve updated variable fields — like scope, code syntax, or publishing settings — Figma will now clearly list those changes in branch review and flag any conflicts between the variables in your branch and those in the main branch.

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.

“Improvements to the admin console are rolling out for admins on Pro, Organization, and Enterprise. The admin console will now open in a new space with a dedicated sidebar navigation. There will also be a new interaction in the members table for managing a given user. Additionally, for Pro Teams, we have removed the Team permissions column from the Members table. Moving forward, Pro Team admins can adjust seats from the admin console and member permissions from the Team settings page.”

“Code Connect Version 1.2 launched this week and includes support for design systems written in Angular, Vue, and HTML, an improved getting started wizard for the command line tool, and expanded configuration options for React icons.”

“Figma is making it easier for admins to find and manage draft folders of members and guests who have been removed from their organization, now known as ​”unassigned drafts.” Organization admins on Organization and Enterprise plans can now access unassigned drafts directly from the admin console. Starting today, Pro team admins can also manage them from a new tab in the Pro team admin console.”

The beta of UI3 is now available to everyone. Check out this list of changes made after hearing the feedback.

Jenny Xie interviewed Marcin Wichary, Joel Miller, Ryhan Hassan, and KC Oh about the new Figma UI: ​“Our goal with UI3 is to keep designers in the flow by minimizing distractions and placing their work center stage. With that north star in mind, our team worked for over two years, iterating on myriad approaches — even reversing some core design decisions, like the floating navigation and properties panels, after launch.”

In the past, the file browser and the community files required different thumbnail aspect ratios. Now, it’s standardized at 16:9 across Figma files, FigJam, and Figma Slides.

Figma added iPhone 16 (including Pro, Pro Max, and Plus), Apple Watch Series 10 (42mm and 46mm), and Android (Compact, Medium, Expanded) to the Frames menu. If you need vector iPhone 16 device frames for the prototyping, Keeyen published the community file with different models and colors.

Joey Banks shows one of the newly announced features. When objects are duplicated, rotated, and then duplicated again, Figma will continue that rotation with subsequent copies of your object.

Kaitie Chambers and Miggi kicked off the first episode of monthly Release Notes, where they dropped new features and recapped everything shipped in September. Readers of this newsletter will be already familiar with most of the changes, but there are some new things worth covering. 

UI3 rolls out for everyone on October 10th. The biggest change in the final version is the return of fixed panels — Figma listened to the feedback from the design community and closed the gaps. The panels still float when the Minimize UI (Shift-\) mode is turned on. Other changes include the always visible Auto Layout pixel values along the resize modes, the layer header showing 3 reorganized actions by default and one more when the panel is wider on larger screens, and showing the component library info in the component properties panel. It’s now even easier to set the Auto Layout object’s width and height to Fill Container or Hug Contents via the quick actions menu (Cmd-K) or a custom macOS shortcut.

After research or brainstorming sessions, FigJam stickies can now be sorted by color, author, stamp count, or stamp type in addition to the previously announced FigJam AI. Figma Slides now supports custom slide deck templates, which can even be published in the community. Slides are now viewable on your mobile device, so you can view and join a presentation from anywhere. 

My personal Figma account is on UI3, but I spend most of my days in a work account stuck on UI2. Surely I’m not the only one in this boat who found switching between two UIs quite distracting. Can’t wait to start using UI3 in my daily work.

Describing design details with plain text is a nice way to communicate the intent to developers.

You can now rename files in the desktop app by double-clicking the tab name.

A note to app developers: ​“We’re releasing a new embed kit that gives you more control and flexibility over how you embed Figma in your website or app.”

The desktop app on macOS now sports a refreshed app icon.

“We’ve added a new export quality setting to give you more control over the file size and quality of images when exporting frames and images from Figma as JPEGs or PDFs. A new quality dropdown in Advanced export settings allows you to choose from High, Medium, or Low quality when exporting as a JPEG or PDF. Low quality will compress your images the most, resulting in the smallest file size, and High quality won’t compress images at all. If you do not select a quality setting upon export, there will be no change to how your files are exported; Figma will follow existing default settings (Medium quality for PDFs and High quality for JPEGs). Also available in FigJam.”

“Org admins on Organization and Enterprise plans can now use Figma’s pre-integrated Google SSO app to configure SAML SSO for their org. Customers on the Enterprise plan can also use the pre-integrated app to enable SCIM provisioning.”

Figma just added 450 new Google Fonts to the app. Select ​“Google Fonts (8÷24 update)” from the font picker dropdown to access them.