Figma Pins, A Concept to Fix Multiple Tabs Worklflows

There are many reasons designers keep a gazillion open tabs in Figma. It shouldn’t be this way. At least not for the reasons some of us do it, anyway. Tabs are a hack to a problem with Figma. How to find, open and access important files easily? Especially when those files are crucial to the current workflow.

How Figma workflows work today.

Instead of going back and forth and search through an insane amount of thumbnails or hard to remember files names, keeping a bunch of tabs open is a way to create design shortcuts to important design files.

Designers know where to look when they need access to The Files. The mental load is minimal compared to scanning or skimming in Home > Recent. Not to mention remembering, guessing and typing in search.

Designers know these tabs are available to use right away. An opened file in Figma doesn’t take anytime to load. The design appears in a snap. RAM is taking a hit, but that’s another issue.

A potential solution.

Pins in Figma offer one of the many potential solutions to this problem. The idea follows the Figma way of doing things as seen with the recent redesign of the home Home tab.

Designers can Pin or Favorite or whatever, design files deemed vital to their workflow. They can choose which files would load and open instantly or fast. The concept can extend to FigJam files as well.

• Instant means that the pinned files will get a similar treatment from the system as if they opened in tabs.
• Fast means that the pinned files will load as normal files, maybe with some sort of “light pre-loading”.

I hope that we will soon see a solution to this problem. I’m sure someone at Figma is already working on this.

This idea came to mind after seeing someone else having the same issue.