Figma's 2020 roadmap: faster tools, tighter collaboration, wider community

At its first Config conference in San Francisco, Figma announced seven product updates aimed at three core areas: creation, collaboration, and community. The company says its focus for 2020 is on automating repetitive design work, bringing everyone involved in the design process into the fold, and giving the wider design community better ways to share work. Underlying those priorities is a continued commitment to a reliable, high-performing platform, which Figma frames as a permanent baseline investment.

Streamlining the design workflow

Several updates target the day-to-day mechanics of building designs, reducing the clicks and adjustments required for type, color, and layout.

Auto Layout is gaining the ability to create responsive components that stretch to fill their containers. Announced just a few months after the feature's initial release, the update responds to user feedback and extends Auto Layout beyond its original use cases—buttons that resize with their text and easily rearranged lists—to designs that need to adapt across device types.

The Font Picker is being redesigned to address the burden of sorting through 1,000+ pre-installed fonts. The new picker surfaces the fonts you use most frequently, including shared organization fonts and favorites, and highlights fonts already used in the current file to help maintain design consistency. A quick search remains available for the rest of the library.

For color corrections, Selection Colors lets you batch-update fills, strokes, and text in a single action, rather than adjusting each property independently when you want them all to match. This feature is available from today.

Prototyping is also getting more input options. New triggers support devices like keyboards, gamepads, and accessibility controllers, allowing designers to prototype application keyboard shortcuts (for example, Cmd + F) or video game menus that respond to controller input.

Keeping product teams in sync

A second set of updates focuses on communication and context, which Figma identifies as common pain points when teams work across different tools and time zones.

Hyperlinks in the Editor will allow you to link any text to a web page, any page within a file, or any frame. This is aimed at two use cases: connecting design work to external resources like product requirement documents, and building clickable tables of contents that make large files easier to navigate.

The new Plugin Inspector API lets plugin developers surface key information directly in the properties panel. As an example, a plugin like Notepad could display action items right in the panel when relevant, while a map-generating plugin such as Mapsicle can signal that a visual was produced with it, making the asset easier to identify and update. This API goes live today.

Sharing is also advancing, with a new permission level that lets you share a prototype without granting access to the underlying design file. The feature is coming to Figma Professional and Organization plans.

Building an open design ecosystem

The last pillar is the expansion of the Figma Community, which launched in beta in October with the goal of creating a public space for publishing live design files that anyone can inspect, remix, and learn from. Since the beta began, over 400 creators have published more than 1,000 files, covering everything from wireframes and icon sets to design systems, device frames, slide templates, and illustrations.

The catalog includes official resources such as Google's Material Design UI Kit, Microsoft's Visual Studio Code Toolkit, and Uber's Base Gallery — as well as more unexpected entries like a Pac Man game and DIY Magic: the Gathering card templates. Workflow aids like a design handoff checklist and sticky notes utility also made the list. Roughly 800 of those files are currently available for anyone to duplicate and remix; sign-up for the beta remains open for designers who want to publish to their own public profile.

Rollout dates

Auto Layout updates, Selection Colors, and the Plugin Inspector API are all available starting today. The redesigned Font Picker, Hyperlinks, and the full Figma Community rollout are scheduled to arrive soon.