Creating beautiful gradients in Figma just got easier! New controls for flipping and rotating gradients (see why they’re separate controls), displaying the gradient stop position in percentage (another yay from me!), and even better-looking defaults (although they’re bringing back the old behavior if you add a gradient on top of another fill).

A big release of ​“squeaky stairs” fixes to the prototyping! First, the inline preview now shows mobile prototypes in draggable and resizable device frames. For a deep dive on this, see the article Behind the feature: Inline device frames.

Second, there are multiple improvements to the editing speed — copy and paste noodles and interactions to a different element; delete noodles and associated interactions; delete a starting point by dragging the ​“flow label” outside of the frame; disable all shortcuts on a prototype; enable multiple ​“After Delay” events on every node; use the ​“Change to” interaction on a nested variant; auto-exit the Scale tool when switching to the Prototype tab; copy a link to the selected flow; resize the inline preview to the actual size of the prototype, and auto-focus on the input when creating a new flow.

Third, improvements to prototyping with variables — when copying and pasting an element with a local variable bound to it, Figma will create a new collection with the copied variable; overlays now inherit the mode of the frame linking to them; negative numbers support in the expression builder; support for ! or not in a boolean conditional check (yay!), and string values ​“true” or ​“false” can be bound to instance visibility in addition to booleans. Prototyping performance has also improved, cutting down loading spinners by 22%.

Finally, the width and height values can now be set to zero, so we don’t need to rely on the 0.001 hack anymore! For a nice roundup of the above improvements, see threads by prototyping PM Garrett Miller and designer Niko Klein.

More Figma-to-code solutions: ​“Trace helps you convert your Figma designs to live SwiftUI prototypes within minutes. You can also preview, view code, edit, export, etc. on the fly. Trace uses AI to write SwiftUI code and compile the entire project within minutes.”

A new plugin by Lichin Lin to bend your text into a circle, square, or even arch shape.

Replit launched an experimental Figma plugin that converts designs into runnable React code. ​“Generate a Repl directly from Figma, and instantly share a static React app with your team. Then, use Replit AI to add functionality and get your code production-ready.” Read more about this experiment in their blog post.

Tom Biskup shares practical tips on improving typography in your project — learning from others with a Chrome plugin, setting your type in Figma, keeping it simple by limiting choices, thinking in systems and setting a type scale, using ChatGPT for filler copy instead of ​“lorem ipsum”, and picking fonts from great foundries.

“Figma Shortcut Master Game is a cool prototype made in Figma. It’s a fun way to learn Figma keyboard shortcuts or test what you already know.” There is a total of 11 levels but they’re pretty challenging! Impressive what you can achieve with just a Figma prototype.

Designer Advocate Lauren Andres shares tips on how to streamline handoff when it’s a constant stream of WIP designs, communication, and collaboration. Her advice involves using annotations in Dev Mode, adopting a shared language, organizing your files with sections and ​“Ready for dev” statuses, archiving old designs, and leaning on components.

Dualite converts Figma designs and prototypes to React and HTML/CSS. ​“Create reusable code components with semantic naming from Figma variants in a single-click. Use tagging for turning static layers to external links, input fields, buttons and embeds.”

“You can export content to share designs with others, move content between tools, or save copies of your work outside of Figma. In this video, we’ll walk through how to export content and go over ways to troubleshoot common export issues.”

A set of benchmarks to level up the quality of your Figma components and define what constitutes a good component. The content is divided into two sections: ​“Design”, featuring items that can aid in crafting a component; and ​“Testing”, containing considerations for testing your component before final publication.

Anthony DiSpezio shows how merge reviews now ignore top-level sections, allowing you to review changes at the frame or component level.

Stumbled upon this old blog post from 2019 by Alex Harri, one of the engineers behind Figma’s Vector Networks. Fascinatingly deep dive! ​“This post can be thought of as an introduction to a really interesting problem space, and as a resource for people interested in making use of some aspects of Vector Networks for future applications. I hope it succeeds in providing value to both developers being introduced to new concepts and ideas, and to designers interested in learning more about the tool they know and love.”

A promising new app providing the presentation interface for Figma. Design your deck templates in Figma, instantly sync the template to deckd, and start building your presentations. Deckd lets you edit all text elements, present directly or share via link, and decide who can see what with access control.

The new video series from Luis Ouriach on variables. The first part introduces the basic concepts and terminology — variable types, collections, modes, and aliases. The second part is ​“The 3 levels of variable” where Luis explains the definitions of primitive, semantic, and component-level variables. The third part focuses on creating your first variables and using modes to manage theming and densities.

“Using variables in your Figma libraries? Learn how to set a default mode for a library that applies to all of your teams and files within a workspace.”

Molly suggests it’s time to support multiple icon sizes with number variables.

Chad shows how to use variables to change a variant on a component instance in your designs.

Erez Reznikov shows some examples of the divergence between how code and visual design tools treat interactive elements and components in general, then suggests an alternative to the handoff process. ​“Construct tools and processes for designers and developers that will make it much harder to not be on the same page. Suppose a design tool would be made out of real elements, with an already existing, verified structure, that is backed by code beneath it all. You mainly see web builders do it today, like Webflow and Framer. When you use an element like a checkbox in these apps, it’s a real, working checkbox.”

I keep seeing complaints about the removal of code generation from the free view-only mode, and want to point out this section of the ​“Dev Mode is out of beta: what admins need to know” article. CSS, iOS, and Android codegen is still available but now is in the copy/​paste menu when you right-click a layer and choose ​“Copy as code”. For an overview of the other collaboration features available on the free plan, see Use the right sidebar with view-only access help article.