This one is a big ​“finally” for me! BRB, I have some library cleanup to do.

Freshly baked goodies: FigPals for April Fun Week (extended until April 11); a button for collapsing layers — love that it excludes the layer tree of your selection; quality-of-life improvements to corner radius inputs and flyouts for effects, fills, and layout grids; reordering variables modes and collections; annotations in Design Mode; accessibility contrast in color picker; and finally, an eyedropper added to Dev Mode.

“Designers crafting elaborate prototypes in Figma to mimic basic digital interactions are essentially building digital Rube Goldberg machines. If you’re going to spend hours creating intricate simulations in Figma, you might as well put that effort directly into code — because in the end, code is where your designs must ultimately function.”

I might be biased, but I don’t see many designers that ​“tweak their Figma files endlessly, push back on any technical constraints, and then smugly hand over their ​“perfect” design — only to be baffled when development comes back with a hundred questions about feasibility”. What I do see is designers learning to program, adopting AI tools like Cursor, and getting heavily involved in building and shipping their vision — and I’m here for that.

“Figma is localizing for the Spanish market. This includes full product translation, culturally adapted user interfaces, and dedicated support for Spanish language users. Figma plans to expand product localization to additional languages throughout the year, as it continues to invest in its global community.” (Coincidently, I was in Spain when this was announced. Rest assured I didn’t touch Figma while vacationing with my family.)

“On April 30, we’ll be fully transitioning to UI3, our redesigned interface that puts your work center stage. Here’s what you need to know about the change, along with tips for a smooth transition.”

A few tweaks and improvements to the file browser create a more consistent experience.

See if color contrast meets accessibility standards right within the color picker. I’m glad this is now built-in and the UI looks great (see an X thread from Billy Sweeney), but as a color nerd and creator of Accessible Palette, I wish Figma went a step further and supported APCA. I wrote about issues with the WCAG 2 back in 2021 (see the last section), and Arthur Objartel made a strong case for supporting it as well.

Monotype published a new kind of trends report for 2025: ​“Ancient oracles peered into the future. From a specific point in time, they forecast what could come. That’s what we want this report to be: a typographic oracle. We want to mark this moment in time, to celebrate design and typography’s progress, and to challenge all of us to envision what lies ahead by looking at the larger cultural forces shaping our time and work.”

“Figma now transforms common character combinations into smart symbols in all fonts. Now when you type the following characters – ©, ®, ™, ->, <-, vv, ^^, \[ \] – Figma will automatically transform them into smart symbols: ©️, ®️, ™️, →, ← , ↓, ↑, ▢. This will occur with every font, as long as you have the ​“Use smart quotes/​symbols” preference on. Also available in FigJam and Slides.”

Last Tuesday, Figma rolled out the new pricing, which was announced in December. The design seats price increased, while Dev Mode seats remained unchanged and all paid seats now include FigJam and Slides. Admins got upfront approval over seat upgrades.

Turn complex variable relationships into an intuitive visual map to see and manage all your variables on one infinite canvas. Watch the demo video.

“Collaboration tools like Figma promise streamlined workflows and collective creativity, but there’s a darker side: too many opinions, endless edits, and a loss of individual vision. In this piece, we explore whether Figma’s collaborative power might actually hinder great design by inviting too many cooks into the kitchen.”

Nice built-in support for code blocks with syntax highlighting in Slides.

Figma shared new details about connected projects that will launch in the first half of 2025. They let two separate teams or organizations — like an agency and a client — collaborate on a shared project using billable seats from their plans without paying for extra seats. Pro users can connect up to 3 projects, Organization 6 and Enterprise 15. The plan of the team initiating a connected project determines features available to all users collaborating on the project. Resources like shared libraries and fonts can be enabled for everyone.

Jitter is a fast and simple animation tool. The plugin was rebuilt from the ground up for pixel-perfect compatibility, better performance, and powerful new import features like Figma Slides support, importing multiple frames or an entire Figma file, and better artboard pasting.

Ridd shows an advanced way of using variables to simplify prototyping and save a bunch of screens.

“We’ve made the scrubbable area to the left of input fields larger to make it easier to start scrubbing. We also fixed a bug that inadvertently made 1 pixel scrubbable on the right side of an input field. Rolling out over the next few days, you’ll only be able to initiate scrubbing from the left side of an input field.”

Keyboard shortcuts were finally added to boolean operations! Press ⌥⬆ (Mac) or Alt+⬆ (PC) with U to unify your selection, S to subtract, I to intersect, E to exclude, and F to flatten. The ⌘E still works for Flatten!

Plugins are now available in Figma Slides, and three dozen plugins have already been updated to support it.

“See when teammates and invited guests last visited your Figma files, helping you track engagement and keep projects moving forward.”