Figma plugins are finally here!
At the beginning of August 2019, Figma finally opened the doors to their plugins ecosystem, after a few weeks of closed beta testing.
The design community got very excited by this news, as the lack of plugins on Figma used to be one of the big features still missing and preventing designers to make the move over from other design tools.
Users are now able to extend Figma’s core functionalities thanks to a growing number of Figma plugins (about 100 at the moment) which can be easily installed in one click, right within the app.
All you have to do is click on the “Plugins” link on the left menubar and you’ll see all the plugins available on Figma, including the ones you have already installed and the featured and popular ones.
We spent some time trying out many of the plugins available and we made a shortlist of those that we think are the most useful ones.
Obviously this list might change over time, and if you feel like we left out some important mentions, please let us know.
Here’s the list:
Unsplash
Unsplash.com is probably the most popular website offering free stock photos.
With this Figma plugin, you can easily insert amazing Unsplash images straight into your designs.
You can either place a random image or search for a specific term and look for the perfect image for your needs, directly in the plugin’s simple interface.
All images available through this plugin can be used for free, for both personal and commercial projects.
Find and replace
This one does exactly what it says on the tin.
It’s a very simple, but incredibly useful, Figma plugin which allows you to search for any piece of text within your page and replace it with another term, just like any common text editor on the planet.
How many times did we have to do it manually? Well, those days are gone!
Mockuuups Studio
Mockuuups Studio is a easy to use mockup generator which includes over 500 various scenes.
This plugin is packed with everything you need to create product mockups, outstanding marketing materials, even visual content for social media or blog posts.
Check it out!
Map maker
As designers, we often have to use maps in user interfaces, and the whole process of going to Google Maps, select the perfect section of a map and copy it back into the design can be quite tedious.
With this Figma Plugin you can do all of that without ever leaving Figma: Map Maker allows you to easily insert customized maps into your designs.
You can also easily edit a map you have already generated, all you need to do is select the layer where the map has been placed, and run the plugin again.
It currently works only with Google Maps and Mapbox, but other mapping platforms will be supported in the near future.
Content reel
This plugin has been created by Microsoft and it allows you to easily pull text strings, avatars and icons into your Figma projects.
All you have to do is select one or more layers and choose which type of content you want to retrieve from the Content Reel dialog.
This plugin is extremely useful when you want to quickly populate long lists of objects with real content.
INSTALL IT NOW
Figmotion
This plugin works as a proper animation tool right within Figma.
Thanks to Figmotion you will be able to create basic animations without the need to move to other animation tools like Principle or After Effects, everything can be done in Figma.
It has a bit of a learning curve, but it’s definitely an item you should have in your Figma plugins toolbox.
To learn more about it: https://freighter.gitlab.io/figmotion/knowledgebase/
Color Blind
Designing with accessibility in mind is always important, that’s why this plugin comes in handy. Color Blind allows you to check how your designs are viewed by users affected by 8 different types of color blindness conditions.
Just select the artboard you want to check, run the plugin and it will create an artboard for each vision deficiency selected, showing you how users affected by it are seeing the colors used in your design.
INSTALL IT NOW
Lorem ipsum
Not much to say about this plugin, it’s exactly what you think it is.
It allows you to quickly insert some “Lorem ipsum” dummy text into one or more selected layers.
Very simple, but big time saver if you think how many times you do this by copying and pasting text!
INSTALL IT NOW
Iconify
This plugin allows you to import vector icons into Figma without ever leaving the app.
You can import icons from: FontAwesome, Jam Icons, EmojiOne, Material Design Icons, Twitter Emoji and many other icon sets.
In total we are talking about more than 50 icon sets containing over 40,000 icons!
INSTALL IT NOW
Similayer
With this Figma plugin you will be able to select a set of similar layers based on very specific properties that you can choose. This allows you to quickly select and edit objects having similar characteristics.
For example, let’s say you want to change the radius of every boxed container of a page, you can do it very quickly with this plugin!
INSTALL IT NOW
Blobs
This plugin allows you to easily generate vector “blobs” elements, which are quite trendy lately when it comes to spice up a landing page.
All objects created are unique and you can control their complexity and contrast.
INSTALL IT NOW
Nisa Text Splitter
This one is really cool! It provides you an easy way to split larger pieces of text into smaller, individual text objects.
For example you can use a list of 10 text items separated by line breaks, and in one shot create 10 different text layers.
Many other useful text-altering options are included, check it out!
INSTALL IT NOW
Rename it
This plugin allows you to perform some of the actions that Figma users have been asking for some time.
With Rename It you can keep your files tidy and organized by batch renaming multiple layers using very specific naming rules and conventions.
INSTALL IT NOW
That’s about it for now, we’ll keep on reviewing new Figma plugins so I’m sure this list will grow and change over time.
In the meantime, enjoy!