Figma Layers Panel Tips | How To

On Oct 16, 2018

Figma is fast becoming the web industry’s design and prototyping tool of choice, arguably even more so than Adobe XD and Sketch. This is the first in a series of thirteen posts, each one a small collection of Figma tips and tricks to help you learn something specific. So let’s begin with some tips to speed up working with the layers panel.

Watch Tips

1. Layer Groups Auto-Delete When Empty

In many design applications, by deleting sublayers (or child layers) the main parent layer will still remain intact. In Figma, however, by selecting and deleting all the child layers the parent is also deleted, which helps keep things nice and neat.

2. Unlock or Unhide All Objects

You can unlock or unhide all objects at once by typing CMD + / or CTRL + / (depending on your platform). Enter (for example) “unlock” in the box which pops up and select which command you’d like to perform.

unlocking all objects at the same time — Unlock objects

3. Super-Fast Layer Renaming

When renaming layers you can hit TAB to skip quickly to the next one. Hitting SHIFT + TAB will take you back up the list, renaming as you go.

4. Collapse and Expand Multiple Layers

To expand multiple layers at once, start by selecting the layers you want in the layers panel to the left. Hold down CMD or CTRL depending on your platform, then hit any one of the little expand arrows you see to the left of the layer names. This will open up absolutely everything within all those chosen layers.

To collapse everything again, it’s the same process in reverse.

expanding multiple layers in Figma — Expanding multiple layers in Figma

5. Quickly Toggle Visibility and Locking

To quickly lock a whole bunch of layers in Figma, just click a layer “lock” icon and drag down until you’ve locked all you need (the same applies in reverse for unlocking layers). To hide or reveal layers the same approach can be used, but by clicking and dragging on an “eye” icon.