If you regularly work with interfaces, Figma can be the ideal workspace with all the features you need. But to achieve this, it is important not only to know how to use Figma, but to master it at a detailed level. We’ve compiled a list of 10 key features of this editor that are worth learning to make your work faster, more accurate, and cleaner. Try them out and feel the difference.
Auto Layout: forget about manual alignment
Auto Layout is one of Figma’s most powerful and useful tools. It allows you to create adaptive blocks in which elements are automatically aligned and scaled to fit changing content.
Let’s take a product card template as an example. Instead of manually adjusting margins and struggling every time you add text, you can set rules using Auto Layout, and the block will adjust itself to the content. This is especially useful if the interface you are developing has dynamic content: product name, price, rating, etc. The structure of the card remains the same, and the content is substituted from the database — and there can be hundreds of such cards on one page. Thanks to Auto Layout, you don’t have to create a separate form for each of them.
Plus, if you work in a team, Auto Layout makes the layout structure clear to all participants without additional explanations.
Components and Variants: build your library like a pro
Imagine if you had to draw every button on the site separately—how much time would that take? Luckily, with Figma, you can automate this work. Components help with this: elements that you can create once and then multiply into copies.
If, for example, you need to change the design of the buttons, you only need to edit the main component, and the copies will change automatically. You can also modify specific copies. Such changes take priority: if you paint a copy red and then fill the main element with gray, the repainted copy will remain red.
To make working with Components even more convenient, group them into logical sets called Variants in Figma. For example, a button needs to have four states: normal, with an icon, active, and inactive. Thanks to Variants, you can create one component instead of four separate ones and add the necessary states to it. This simplifies organization, saves time, and minimizes errors.
Helpful tip: think through the structure of your components in advance. This will make working with the library smooth and easy.
Constraints: make one layout for all resolutions
The Constraints feature helps you adapt interfaces to different screens without unnecessary alignment complications. It sets binding rules that specify how an element should behave when the parent frame changes size.
Example: a button on a card. If you set it to Right, it will always maintain the specified right margin, even if the width of the block itself changes. If you set it to Left & Right, the button will stretch across the width, maintaining margins on the right and left.
In other words, by setting Constraints, you are literally telling Figma: “If the container dimensions change, do this.” This solves several problems at once:
- simplifies the adaptation of the interface to different resolutions;
- allows you to test the behavior of blocks without duplicating layouts;
- makes the layout logic predictable for both the designer and the developer.
This is especially useful when designing cards, headers, sidebars, lists, and any interface blocks that need to adjust to the screen width.
Useful: knowing how to work with Constraints helps you accurately visualize the behavior of the product, simplifying the work of both the designer and the developer.
Smart Selection: automate the placement of repeating elements
You can manually place all interface elements, align them, and adjust indents. Or you can automate all of this. Figma has a Smart Selection feature for this. It automatically recognizes evenly spaced elements and groups them. It’s like Auto Layout, only simpler.
You can manually arrange all interface elements, align them, and adjust indents. Or you can automate all of this. Figma has a Smart Selection feature for this purpose. It automatically recognizes evenly spaced elements and groups them together. It’s like Auto Layout, only simpler.
For example, let’s design a section with user reviews. We arrange the review cards by eye, select everything, and Figma understands that this is a grid and adds pink markers between the elements. By dragging the markers, we change the indents between all objects at once. If you need to change the order of the cards, drag and drop them, and the layout will update while maintaining the rhythm. If you add another card, it will also be positioned automatically.
Smart Selection is useful when:
- there are many repeating elements with equal intervals;
- you need to quickly adjust the spacing without manual adjustment;
- you need to change the order of objects;
- you don’t want to deal with Auto Layout unnecessarily, for example, when working on a draft.
Plus: Smart Selection even works with objects of different types. The main thing is that they are roughly aligned horizontally or vertically.
