Figma shipped aggressively in 2025. New AI tools, a revamped Dev Mode, improvements to Variables, Slides (the presentation product), and incremental updates to components, auto-layout, and prototyping. The release cadence was fast enough that teams who weren’t watching closely probably missed things that are genuinely useful.
Here’s the signal separated from the noise, based on conversations with product design teams who’ve been shipping with these features for several months.
Worth using immediately: Grid variables. This was a quiet update and it’s transformative for teams maintaining design systems. Grid definitions (column count, margin, gutter) can now be stored as variables and toggled per breakpoint. What previously required a separate “grid frame” for every breakpoint now lives in a single component with switched variable contexts. Any team with a responsive design system should set this up.
Worth using with caveats: AI text generation. The AI copy suggestions in frames are useful for wireframing (filling placeholder text with plausible-length content for the right content type) but the quality degrades on anything requiring brand voice or specificity. Don’t use it for final copy. Do use it to replace lorem ipsum in usability testing sessions: stakeholders read AI placeholder text as “real” in a way they don’t read lorem ipsum, which produces more realistic feedback.
Not yet worth the friction: Slides. Figma Slides is a credible Keynote replacement for design-heavy presentations. It’s not a credible alternative for anything requiring heavy text, data tables, or collaboration with non-designers. The missing thing is a way to embed live Figma frames into slides that update when the underlying component changes. Once that ships, the handoff pitch becomes compelling.
Overrated: the variable mode system. Variables are powerful, but the mode-switching system for theming (light/dark, brand A/brand B) has a complexity ceiling. Once you have more than two modes and more than ~150 tokens, the dependency graph becomes hard to audit. The tooling hasn’t caught up to the feature. Wait for third-party plugins to close the gap before committing your design system to a multi-mode variable architecture.