What's New in Figma: October 2021

Figma's October releases focus on making collaboration more flexible, whether your team prefers real-time co-editing or parallel work on separate branches. The update also brings substantial improvements to the prototyping workflow and expands the FigJam ecosystem with community-built tools.

FigJam Gets Widgets, Plugins, and Open Sessions

Following the move to a more open platform, FigJam now supports community-built widgets and plugins directly inside its files. Widgets are collaborative by design and can be dropped into a board with a single click. Featured examples include Photo Booth for adding selfies, Alignment Scale for team check-ins, and Org Chart for mapping out reporting structures.

Plugins target faster expression and synthesis. The Tour Guide plugin converts a jam board into a slide-based presentation, Color Picker expands color options for stickies and shapes, and Unsplash provides on-demand imagery.

The Explore section in the toolbar now serves as a hub for discovery, alongside two notable additions:

  • FigJam templates: pre-formatted boards for brainstorms, workshops, and research to jump-start a session.
  • Code blocks and new shapes: tools that let developers bring code-level detail and more complex diagrams into their jams.

With Open sessions, teams can also invite visitors into a FigJam file without requiring those guests to create an account.

Prototyping: Interactive Components and Cleaner Canvases

New interactive components make it possible to package reusable, stateful behavior into a single component. Instead of re-creating prototype logic, designers can apply components that already contain the necessary interactions, freeing up time for iteration.

To keep complex prototype graphs readable, Figma now hides interactions "inherited" from main components when viewing instances on the canvas. This declutters the interface for faster editing and a smoother handoff to developers.

A handful of smaller prototyping additions also shipped this month:

  • Prototype tab shortcut: toggle between the design and prototype tabs with Shift + E.
  • Interactions visible for everyone: interactions can now be viewed and explored directly on the canvas.
  • Disable keyboard navigation in viewer: useful for running more realistic user tests where default arrow-key navigation would interfere.
  • Copy/paste interactions: removes repetitive setup work when replicating prototype logic.

Branching for Larger Teams

Branching is now broadly available to all users on the Figma Organization plan. Branching enables teams to create temporary, parallel versions of a design file, allowing designers to explore freely before deciding whether to merge their changes back into the main file. This supports workflows where collaborators need to work independently rather than simultaneously in a single shared file.