Top 9 Figma Plugins Which I Use Every Day
By: Andrew Hutsko
Tags: Figma Plugin, Prototyping, Figma, UI Design

I started learning Figma back in 2018. Now it’s almost 2,5 years that I’ve been using this beautiful prototyping tool on a day-to-day basis. By the way, my journey in UI/UX design started at the same time, so Figma is the first thing I learned to prototype with.

Like many other starting designers I did not work with some other popular prototyping tools like Sketch and Adobe XD, because they were pretty expensive for me then.

It was a great surprise that I found Figma and it was completely free, which allowed me to learn it all. I found Figma to be a very interesting and effective tool. And you know what makes Figma an even more effective tool? Plugins, that extend its functionality, of course.

So here I have my 9 best Figma plugins that I use almost every day. Hope you will find them worthy.

#1 Replace Layers

Figma Community link: https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/854164523358810429/Replace-Layers

I always forget to create components when I am immersed in the process, so I create UI-element and place them through the layout and realize that this should be a component. What I did before to fix this? I took the element out of the layout, created a component, and put it into UI Kit. It needed a lot of time. So I found “Replace Layers”. Now I just need to copy the element and put it in UI Kit. Make it a component. Run “Replace Layers” and put my component to the clipboard and replace the element in the layout with just created component.

Price: Free

#2 Meow!

Figma Community link: https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/946844618678350922/Meow!

This one is pretty similar to the previous one, but this one is newer and easier. “Meow!” lets you turn your selected layer into a component and all the identical layers into its instances. So that it hugely saves your time.

Price: Free

#3 Split Shape

Figma Community link: https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/746565487016656360/Split-Shape

From time to time you may need to create some table or grid or something like this. Doing such things requires some calculations that are not the most pleasant thing to happen while you are in the process. So “Split Shape” lets you split any shape into rows and columns of a particular size and with a particular gutter. That’s nice to have.

Price: Free

#4 Nisa Text Splitter

Figma Community link: https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/739048247603902878/Nisa-Text-Splitter

I worked with website design a lot and that’s a fact that websites have much content inside, especially text. And sometimes you are given a list of some stuff that you have to separate and put into some different UI elements, for example, a list of cities needs to be distributed between different city cards. With “Nisa Text Splitter” you just put that list and split it into many pieces. You don’t have to carefully select every row of text anymore.

Price: Free

#5 Many Paster

Figma Community link: https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/831936445397604629/Many-Paster

This plugin helps me every time I need to put some pre-defined content in my designs. For example, I had to put a list of city names, where the business points were located, so that I took that list from Google Sheets, put it into “Many Paster” and it’s all done! In a blink of an eye, I have all that city names in my Figma project, in the right places. Great.

Price: Free

#6 Content Reel

Figma Community link: https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/731627216655469013/Content-Reel

This plugin is vital for those who work with content a lot. Of course, it’s better when the content on your designs looks organic and lively. So, here we have Content Reel. You may browse for different kinds of content there. Need Arabic male names? Here you are! Fake company names? No problem. Fake emails, phone numbers? Of course, it’s here. And, by the way, you may select multiple text boxes, and “Content Reel” will paste random values everywhere.

Price: Free

#7 Map Maker/Mapsicle

Figma Community links:

1. Map Maker: https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/731312569747199418/Map-Maker

2. Mapsicle: https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/736458162635847353/Mapsicle

Very often your designs need maps. Regular destinations for maps may be footers, “Contact Us” pages, some features may need them also. For that goal, we have 2 similar plugins in Figma. The first one is “Map Maker”. It contains maps both from “Google” and “Mapbox”. There you can select the preferable theme, scale the map, search for locations. “Mapsicle” is pretty similar, but there are only maps from “Mapbox” and there you cant just search for some specific location, you must move the map to reach the desired location. Tip: Create a rectangle with the right size before launching the plugin, and then once you will have selected the area, the map will be pasted into this rectangle.

Price: Free

#8 Text Prettier

Figma Community link: https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/783077214649465682/Text-Prettier

If you are like me, you don’t love an untidy copy, when there are lots of double spacings, extra spacing between the last word in a sentence and a period. Have you ever experienced working with copy like this? If you have, you may need something that cures it effectively. “TextPrettier” performs it pretty cool. One moment and there are no problems with your text at all.

Price: Free

#9 Similayer

Figma Community link: https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/735733267883397781/Similayer

“Similayer” helps you select multiple layers based on their characteristics. It may let you not select every little piece to do something with all of the elements, especially if you didn’t create a component for it before.

Price: Free