Figma is rapidly becoming one of the most versatile apps for UI and UX designers. With the ability to use the app directly on a browser without any platform or hardware limitations certainly made this SaaS app truly one of the best design tools available today.
Similar to Sketch, Figma also has a large collection of third-party plugins. With these plugins, you can extend the features of the app to supercharge your design workflow and get stuff done more easily.
There are more than 500 different plugins available on the official Figma plugins library. Today, we take a look at some of the best and most useful plugins you can use to create your own workflows and design systems. And of course, all of them are free to install and use. Let’s have a look.
1. Unsplash
Modern designs heavily rely on images to make them more visually appealing. So it’s no surprise that the Unsplash plugin is the most downloaded plugin on Figma with more than 100k installations.
Unsplash has a large collection of free and high-quality stock photos. With this plugin, you can easily add search its massive library and add images to your own UI designs directly from the Figma app. No need to download images and reupload them.
It sounds so simple but it can make a world of a difference when working on a big project.
2. Logo Creator
No need to look for dummy logos or badges when putting together a concept design or a mockup user interface design. With this plugin, you can quickly design a unique logo for your design projects without an effort.
The plugin includes a big library of pre-made logo designs. More than 300 templates to be exact. You can use them instead of dummy logos to make your concepts and UI designs look more realistic.
3. Blobs
Featuring images and illustrations inside creative blob shapes is a stylish design strategy used in both web and app interface designs. With this Figma plugin, you can generate those blobs with just one click.
Each shape the plugin generates is unique. So you’ll have plenty of options to add more style to your website features sections and the app onboarding screens.
4. Palette
If you’re familiar with the Colormind tool, then you’re likely aware of how it uses AI technology to generate accurate color palettes. This plugin uses the machine learning data from Colormind to generate effective color palettes directly from inside Figma.
Using the plugin you can generate a color palette as well as create your own unique color schemes as well.
5. Time Machine
If you’re like most designers, you probably create multiple files to save different versions of your design files. Right until it becomes so frustrating to keep track of the design progress. Time Machine is a useful plugin that solves this problem.
Time Machine allows you to easily save different versions of your designs inside Figma without having to create a separate file. Then you can quickly jump between different versions for reference.
6. HTML to Figma
Have you ever wanted to steal a few components or a layout from another website design to incorporate them into your own projects? Well, this plugin will make that job easier for you.
The plugin allows you to import any HTML web page into Figma as layers. All you have to do is install the plugin and paste the URL to the web page to generate the layers. Of course, it’s not capable of always creating 100% accurate results. Still, it helps save a lot of time otherwise spent on hand-crafting components.
7. Font Awesome Icons
Icons are just as important as images. These days, icons can be found on all kinds of designs. And it’s especially a must for mobile UI designs. This plugin makes it easier to add icons to your designs.
It’s an unofficial plugin that lets you access the entire library of Font Awesome icons directly from Figma. It’s a must-have plugin for mobile UX designers.
8. Content Reel
Usually, when filling out content layouts on UI design projects, we have to rely on lorem ipsum dummy text and same old John Doe profiles. This actually hurts the overall look of the design and makes elements look similar.
With Content Reel plugin, you can say goodbye to those old ways and fill your designs with more creative dummy content and user profiles. It works for text, avatars, and icons as well.
9. Figmotion
Figmotion is one of the most advanced plugins available on Figma. With this plugin, you can create animations directly inside Figma without having to use other software like Adobe After Effects.
Figmotion is a great tool for adding creative animations to your web and mobile designs. But, it requires a bit of a learning curve. More experienced designers will find it most useful.
10. Color Search
If you’re tired of using the same old colors or looking for a creative way to put together a more interesting color palette for your designs, this plugin is for you.
Color Search plugin lets you find beautiful colors by searching for things. For example, you can search the word “sky” and come up with 5 different shades of blue. It’s actually a great way to add some personality to your designs.
11. Chart
Statistics and reports sections are quite common in most app user interfaces. With this plugin, you can easily craft beautiful charts to feature in both mobile apps and websites.
The specialty of this plugin is that it allows you to generate charts using custom data or even with random data. And it includes 16 different types of chart styles as well.
12. Responsify
Figma has a mirroring app that allows you to live-preview your designs on mobile devices. Of course, you can’t use this method to test your app designs on different types of devices without owning them.
This plugin solves that problem. It allows you to easily preview your designs using different sizes of device screens. It’s simple and easy to use.
13. Roller
When rapid prototyping, designers often make small mistakes that affect the consistency of the design and styles. Since it’s a rapid prototype it’s perfectly understandable to make a few errors. But, you won’t have to worry about them when you have this plugin installed.
Roller is a Figma plugin that checks for inconsistencies in your designs and automatically fixes them for you. It will make sure you never make an error in your design systems.
14. Pattern Hero
Tired of paying for patterns and downloading them? Then you’ll find Pattern Hero quite useful. This plugin allows you to create patterns with ease.
Not just patterns but you can use it to also create textures and grids as well. You can use the plugin to quickly generate unique patterns for backgrounds and textures for graphics.
15. Themer
Allowing users to switch between different color schemes (eg: light and dark colors) is a common feature in modern apps. Themer is a Figma plugin that lets you create similar color themes for your design.
The plugin supports themes for colors, text, and even styles from your published style systems. Then you can switch between themes on-the-fly.
16. HTML Generator
With this plugin, you’ll (probably) never have to hand over your website designs over to developers. Because it allows you to generate HTML and CSS code directly from your designs.
While the plugin works wonders for converting designs into HTML, it’s still a work in progress. So it may not create 100% accurate code. However, it’s a great way for designers to learn about code and experiment with designs at the same time.
17. GIFs
If you plan on using GIFs in your designs to make the designs feel more alive, this plugin is a must-have for you. It allows you to search and insert GIFs into your own designs with just a few clicks.
18. Brands Colors
There’s nothing wrong with stealing ideas, as long as you mix your own creative ideas with them. This Figma plugin is great for stealing color schemes from popular brands.
The plugin lets you search for popular brands and the colors they use in designs. Then you can create your own color schemes using different brand colors.
19. User Profile
This plugin has a simple functionality. It allows you to fill any shape in your design with an avatar. It’s most useful for creating user profiles, team pages, and concepts for testimonial and reviews sections in your web and mobile app designs.
20. AutoLayout
Don’t you just hate it when you have to change one component in your design and then have to apply the same change to many other elements of the design all over again? This plugin will make sure that never happens.
AutoLayout plugin allows you to create layouts for similar components in your designs. So that when you change one component, the changes will be automatically updated across other elements.
21. Figma Measure
This plugin needs no introduction. It simply allows you to measure your design elements, components, and layouts to find the sizes. It’ll greatly help you to create more consistent designs.
22. Paddet
Paddet is another simple Figma plugin. It automatically adds padding to frames to keep a consistent design layout across your projects. Of course, you can use the plugin with component instances as well.
23. LottieFiles
LottieFiles is a popular free animations file system used in UX and UI designs. This Figma plugin lets you import the LottieFiles animations and add animated elements in your mobile and web designs.
24. Minimap
This Figma plugin is a must-have for UI designers who work with large projects. It simply adds a minimap to your Figma project to let you easily navigate through large workspaces.
25. Mapsicle
With Mapsicle, you can easily add maps in your own mobile and web designs without having to upload static images. The plugin even lets you search locations and pan the map to find specific locations. All from directly inside the Figma app.
26. To Path
To Path is a simple yet useful plugin that will make your Figma design workflow much easier. This plugin allows you to easily put any object or text element on a path without effort. As you can see in the preview image above, it only takes a few clicks to get it done.
27. UI Faces
Leaving all those user profile image placeholders empty makes your entire design look unprofessional. With this free plugin, you can fix that problem quite easily. The UI Faces plugin lets you generate avatars for your projects using AI and give personalities to your user profiles.
28. Vectorize Bitmap
Want to turn a JPG image, illustration, or logo into vector format? There’s no need to launch Adobe Illustrator to get it done. You can now use this Figma plugin to vectorize your images instantly. The plugin does a great job of turning any raster image into vector format and it even supports transparent images.
29. Icons8 Background Remover
As you can guess from the name, Icons8 Background Remover is a very useful tool that will help you remove the background from any image to create PNG-like images. The best part is that this plugin is completely free to use.
30. Figma to Bootstrap 5 Plugin
This Figma plugin is a must-have for web designers as it will help save you a ton of time. The plugin allows you to easily convert your Figma designs into Bootstrap 5 code, complete with grid, borders, and utility snippets. It’s a completely free and open-source plugin.
Be sure to check out our Figma wireframes and templates collections to find more ways to design projects faster.
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