Using Writer for Figma

Who can use this feature

Supported on Free, Team, and Enterprise plans

Introduction

Writer for Figma is a free Figma plugin available to anyone with a Figma account. You'll need a Writer account to use the plugin.

With the Figma plugin, you can make sure everything that you write in Figma is clear, consistent, and error-free.

If you're on a Free plan, you'll receive suggestions on spelling, punctuation, and grammar.

If you’re on a Team or Enterprise plan, this includes advanced suggestions like style, clarity, delivery, inclusivity, and terminology checks; as well as access to our generative AI features like commands.

Installation

To install Writer for Figma, head to our Figma Community listing.

Select Install on the page. The plugin is now installed and ready for you to use.

Activating Writer for Figma

Activating via right-click

Open a Figma file in the Figma web app or desktop app
Right-click anywhere inside your file to open an options menu
Hover over Plugins > select Writer for Figma
Writer for Figma will appear in a separate window over your file

Activating via the app menu

Open a Figma file in the Figma web app or desktop app
Open the main menu in the upper left hand corner of your screen.
Select Plugins > Writer for Figma.
Writer for Figma will appear in a separate window over your file

To start checking content, select either a frame or text node. If we find any issues with your copy, we’ll make suggestions. Otherwise, you’ll get a “Looking good!” message.

Receiving suggestions on your writing

To start checking content, select either a frame or a text node. Under the Suggestions tab, you'll see suggested improvements on everything from spelling and grammar to whether you've capitalized your key features correctly.

In the top right corner you’ll see a score; 100 is the best score. Simply select a suggestion to accept it, or select the trash can to discard it, or select the three dot menus if you think the suggestion is a little funky. As you review your suggestions, you’ll see that score ticking up towards 100. You can select the score to refresh it.

Learn more about suggestions here.

Referencing important text via snippets

Select the Snippets tab to access your team's snippets, which are reusable pieces of text that you use over and over again, or text that you have to get absolutely right in order to keep your legal team happy.

Select the Snippets menu to review the library, or use the search bar to jump straight to the snippet you need. Select the snippet to copy it to your clipboard, then you can paste it wherever you’re working.

You can also use snippets to create banks of tooltips, error messages, and more. Design teams often store internal guidelines as snippets, so they can reference them without leaving Figma. In the GIF example above, a user searches for the keyword "bold" to find their team's guidelines about using bold or italic text.

Learn more about using snippets here.

Generating content with commands

Finally, Writer doesn’t just refine your own writing - it can generate its own! You can use Writer for Figma to generate new ideas, break out of writer’s block or just write more efficiently.

Simply select the Commands menu, then tell Writer what you want it to do. For example, Write a very short paragraph for a customer email announcing our new autocorrect feature. Use a friendly, funny, casual tone. If your cursor is located within a text field, select Insert to add the generated content directly to your file.

Want to compare a few different responses to your command? Select regenerate to rerun the command and get a brand new output. Use the Previous outputs arrows to navigate back and forth between all the different versions.

Like what you've generated, but want to tweak it a little bit? Select rewrite to make your content shorter, simpler, funnier, or simply more polished.

FAQs

Q: How can I learn more about how product and design teams are using Writer?

Check out our guide, How to use Writer in product and design - use cases, favorite prompts, and more!

Q: I’m clicking on a frame, but nothing is happening.

If your Figma frame is nested inside another frame, you can’t simply select anywhere in the frame to select it, like you can with unnested frames. Instead, you’ll have to select the frame name itself in the upper-left corner of the frame. You’ll know when a frame or text node is selected when its name and outline turn blue.

Q: I’m receiving an error about missing fonts.

If the text in your Figma file uses a font family that you don’t have installed on your computer, you won’t be able to make edits to that text. This is standard behavior across Figma, and is a common problem for non-designers. You’ve got a few options:

Install the font on your computer — your design team likely has licenses to paid fonts that you can request.
Use Figma’s “Missing fonts” window to update the font to a font you do have installed.

Q: Why aren’t snippets working in Figma?

Currently, we don’t support inserting snippets via shortcuts (e.g., typing “w.mission”) in Figma. However, you can access your entire snippets library in the suggestions sidebar. Select snippets in the plugin and search for the text you need. If you select the snippet card, the text will be copied to your clipboard.

Q: I also use the Writer app and Chrome extension, where the wrong text is underlined. Why don’t I see that in Figma?

We’d love to do this too. The Figma plugin developer framework doesn’t currently support this functionality, but we’re hoping it becomes possible soon.

Q: Writer says there’s an issue but I can’t see the words on my screen.

This is most likely happening because there’s a hidden layer in your Figma file — e.g., a layer that's layered beneath an image or another text file. If that layer is an essential part of your design, you can select the layer by taking the following steps:

If the hidden text layer is from an old draft or is no longer needed, best practice is to delete it. Make sure to comment to your colleagues just to make sure before deleting it.