Our 10 favorite Figma plugins to level up your design workflow

When Figma introduced their plugin feature back in 2019, they opened up their tool to a world of possibilities. Now, years later, the design community builds plugins to solve problems and unlock capabilities previously unavailable. 

Our visual designers are true Figma nerds. Always looking for new tools and techniques to add to our arsenal. At Yummygum, we use plugins to supercharge our workflow and get more work done faster. Today I’ll share some of my personal favorites:

1. Time Machine

Iterating is a keyword during any design process. Time Machine helps you save and organize work you want to look back on. With just one click the plugin sends a copy of your selection to a new “Time Machine” page and organizes it chronologically. This plugin has been a lifesafer for us as it helped us compare different versions as designs evolve and change over time. 

2. Contrast

Implied by its name, Contrast is a simple tool that quickly helps you check the contrast ratio of your selection. With the eyes of an eagle that can spot a one pixel offset from a mile away, us designers have a duty to make designs accessible for people who can’t. Contrast quickly helps you check if your designs adhere to AA or AAA contrast ratio. 

3. Batch Styler

In larger projects you sometimes work with nine different headings and three different body sizes, all with different line height variations documented in text styles. Great for versatility!  Until you decide that you actually want  your headings to be medium instead of bold. Before Batch Styler you had to manually adjust all of those text styles yourself but with it, you can select all the styles you want to tweak, select the new desired value and boom..! Large amounts of text styles tweaked in just a few clicks.

4. Noise

Plugins can help you bring projects into their own. We used the Noise plugin in our work for InYouGo to create just the lively and vibrant style we were looking for. The plugin helps you create noise textures and other patterns. By adjusting various sliders and controls you can dynamically generate your own texture. Why don’t you check out our InYouGo case study to see how we implemented the plugin?

5. AvatarG

We’ve all been there; looking for avatar photos that work but aren’t overused kinda feels like an unnecessary hassle. With the AvatarG plugin you can generate great images in your selection in a second.  Besides photos it is also able to generate icon based, initial based and pattern based avatars.

6. Figma to HTML with Framer

A Yummygum we’ve been dipping our toes into no-code tools like Framer, take our work for UPP Protein for example. And although I still like designing in Figma better, Framer is a super fun tool for designers to bring their work to life. Their Figma plugin helps designers who feel the same bridge the gap between the two tools. Although it has some issues with images, it does help exporting designs from Figma to Framer in a second. 

7. Design Lint

The Design Lint plugin scans your Figma file and searches for missing styles. It’s a great plugin to run before handing off work to developers or clients. In a team where we heavily rely on design libraries with text, color and effect styles for consistency, this plugin is useful to spot minor errors or missing styles.

8. Material Symbols

When you need an open source icon set for a product or an illustration, the Material Symbols plugin by Google is great. The size of its catalog is huge, which is harder to find in more custom icon sets. The plugin lets you quickly search for the icon you need and then offers some customizable options like filled or stroke and rounded or sharp. Versatile and reliable, the Material Symbols plugin is one to bookmark.

9. Artboard Studio Mockups

Artboard Studio is known for their sleek mockups and these very same mockups are now also available through their Figma plugin. Browse through their collection of premium or free mockups and add your design into the mockup right then and there in Figma. Nice and convenient when you need a simple clean mockup but don’t feel like whipping up Photoshop. Although, it’s now all Adobe anyway.

10. Vector to 3D

Last but not least there’s Vector to 3D; a plugin that’s not necessarily an everyday kind of tool but deserves to be on this list because of the way it pushes the boundaries of Figma. With the Vector to 3D plugin you can turn your vector selection into an actual 3D object. With a preview window that looks like it came out of Blender you are able to tweak aspects like angle, texture and lighting. Pretty cool if you want to take your text or illustration to a new dimension.

Some ending notes

There are a lot of cool plugins out there that didn’t make the list. Many because although useful, are aimed at a more specific use case.  I’m always on the lookout for delightful new Figma plugins so if there’s one you feel deserves to be on the list, let me know on Twitt- erm X!