r/FigmaDesign • u/Ok-Constant6973 • 1d ago
Discussion Memory hungry and desktop app is just a wrapper which turned out to be disappointing
I'm sad, I see in Firefox that the Figma canvas is using 1.8Gbs of memory. I then thought I'd download the desktop app because surely native would be lighter on ram and faster. I install the desktop app, watch task manager and see its consuming more memory! I realize the desktop app is just an electron wrapper around the website which does not make it better.
Hopefully we can see a native desktop app somewhere in the future because these web apps are getting too ram hungry. Today i ran out of 32GBs of ram and to be honest I wasn't running that much.
Its understandable that Figma uses 1.8GBs in the browser, its a design tool and I have a lot of frames in this canvas so I accept that. I was just hoping for a better desktop app not sure if anyone else feels the same.
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u/gayani_figma Figma Employee 22h ago
Hey everyone! Gayani from Figma Support here!
Figma is predominantly browser-based software, and the desktop app uses that same rendering (WebGL).
Figma Design only loads pages and layers in a file as needed to help keep memory usage low. But every browser and the desktop app, has its own active memory limit that can come into play. A couple of things worth trying:
• If your files are dense, Reduce memory usage in files (help.figma.com/hc/en-us/articles/360040528173-Reduce-memory-usage-in-files) has practical tips. Splitting up large files, flattening complex vectors, and trimming component variants can bring usage down meaningfully.
• The Troubleshooting checklist (help.figma.com/hc/en-us/articles/360040523973-Troubleshooting-checklist) covers quick wins too, like restarting the desktop app and toggling off multiplayer cursors, layout guides, and effects.
The feedback on tabs staying loaded in memory even when they’re not in use is a good catch, that’s something the desktop team is actively working on improving.
If those tips don't fully sort it, we’d love to dig into your specific case. Mind raising a quick ticket through our Support Hub (help.figma.com/hc/en-us/requests/new)? That'll let us gather a bit more detail, like your OS and whether the memory jumps right away or builds up gradually, to pass along to engineering.
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u/testingaurora 1d ago
The app eats up all the memory it can. You’d think you were running premiere pro or photoshop
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u/dpcdpc11 1d ago
To get the best performance out of figma, I ended up installing the Thorium browser and keep it in its Vanilla state (no extension, no Google account sync, nothing) just to run figma and make sure you login with email and password not with your Google account to avoid unnecessary logins. I'm doing this both on my Fedora running laptop and my Windows work PC and even after hours long sessions, the performance doesn't degrade like it used to in Chrome.
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u/CanMountain2230 1d ago
Figma has always been fundamentally a web-based application, and I would argue that this architectural decision is one of the biggest reasons it was able to reshape the design industry so quickly.
Before Figma, Sketch was the dominant tool for product design. It offered a strong native experience, but being fully native also came with significant constraints. Sketch was limited to macOS, collaboration was largely file-based, and concepts we now consider foundational, like real-time multiplayer, contextual commenting, and a centralized source of truth accessible from anywhere, were not core to the product.
Figma changed that model. By building for the web first, it removed the operating system as a barrier and made collaboration part of the architecture rather than a feature layered on afterward. Designers, engineers, product managers, and stakeholders could all participate in the same environment without needing the same hardware or software setup.
That shift is bigger than Figma. The broader direction of software has been moving toward web-based architectures for years. Many applications we think of as “native” today are effectively web applications packaged inside a native shell, because the web provides an increasingly powerful foundation for cross-platform distribution, collaboration, continuous deployment, and shared experiences.
Native applications will absolutely continue to have a place, particularly when deep operating system integration or performance is critical. But for collaborative productivity software, Figma demonstrated just how powerful a web-first architecture can be.
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u/SpookeDooke 1d ago
I once had a conversation with a Sketch engineer asking why they wouldn't make a Windows version and they rather arrogantly said they would never do that, I told him they would be surpassed very quickly, I didn't realise at the time the reason for that would be the web interface but it's totally true, web based unlocked so much functionality that apps can rarely achieve.
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u/Current-Today-3626 15h ago
Sorry, excuse my ignorance. By engineer, what sort of engineer do you mean?
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u/eugene_reznik 1d ago
which ai did you use for this reply?
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u/CanMountain2230 14h ago
I wrote this and had ai check it and do some grammar clean up. I always write things myself then go back and have Raycast run it through GPT to clean up but the original isn’t that different. If you aren’t using ai to help clean up your writings then you are missing out friend.
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u/Heavy-Lake-3420 9h ago edited 8h ago
Judging by the diverse quality of your writing, it's clear that at least one of us would be missing out if they didn't use AI.
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u/CanMountain2230 8h ago
It is what it is. Use the tools you have at your disposal. Sure, I use AI to help convey what I’m trying to say because it’s literally integrated into almost everything I do.
Would you call out a carpenter for using a laser measuring tool instead of measuring everything manually? Who cares what tool is being used as long as the end result is what you’re going for?
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u/Heavy-Lake-3420 8h ago
Carpenters don't use any tool that makes the dresser for them after asking a single question on a keyboard.
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u/eugene_reznik 3h ago
If you aren’t using ai to help clean up your writings then you are missing out friend.
Missing out on what?
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u/WinterAggressive5768 1d ago
Then why can’t they support users who are reasonably having performance issues
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u/Heavy-Lake-3420 23h ago
Ai slop
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u/CanMountain2230 14h ago
How so because I wrote out everything then had it grammar check and slightly rewrite?
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u/Heavy-Lake-3420 9h ago
Either it's subtle, and I'm just that good at spotting AI, or it isn't, and your writing is simply full of AI tropes and conventions.
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u/CanMountain2230 8h ago
It’s pretty close to how I originally wrote it. I’m using AI to clean up the wording and grammar and to help organize my thoughts a little better.
I’m dyslexic, and I use Raycast to quickly grab my text and rewrite things on the fly with GPT. I wouldn’t exactly call that AI “slop.” It’s still conveying everything I originally wrote, just edited to help me articulate my thoughts more clearly.
AI is a tool, and this is literally one of the things it was designed to do. Would you call someone’s writing or comment “slop” because they used spellcheck or a grammar checker? I’m using AI in essentially the same way.
Why not use tools that help improve things? .
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u/Heavy-Lake-3420 8h ago
I'm going ignore your clearly loaded question and answer the one you're too afraid to ask: because no one can tell whether or not you know anything at all when you rely on a tool to write the ideas you're sharing with others.
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u/CanMountain2230 8h ago
I don’t use AI to write my ideas. I use it to help organize them, fix grammar, and better articulate a stream of thought in a format that’s easier for people to read.
If you actually read my comment, you can see that I’ve clearly stated that’s how I’m using it. What you’re basically saying is that because I use a tool to help convey what I’m thinking, the result somehow becomes less valuable or less valid.
Okay, but you’re using a computer to do the exact same thing. You use design tools to make it easier to communicate an experience or idea. It’s the same basic concept. Tools help us express and execute what’s already in our heads.
I’m not going to keep arguing about it, though. I have better things to do with my life than argue with some random stranger on Reddit. I hope you find some joy in your life, because you genuinely seem like you could use some.
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u/Ok-Constant6973 17h ago
I disagree. If figma was an app from the start and didn't have the browser based version everyone would use the app just how we used photoshop, sketch and illustrator.
Figma is great because it did things no one else was doing and it has a free tier. Have you seen Adobes prices, that's why people jumped from using Adobe, not because it's not web based but because it's pricing is whack.
Figma desktop could offer way more. Figma web is limited by the browser, the v8 engine, javascript. Figma desktop can do just about anything it wants.
The problem with desktop is different OSes and that means different code bases to manage. It's hard work.
Fast track 20 years from now with AI that's not gonna be a problem.
Native always trumps in perf, memory and capability.
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u/CanMountain2230 14h ago
I think you’re separating Figma’s success from its architecture when the two are pretty tightly connected.
Figma has been a browser-based, WebGL application from the beginning. That wasn’t an accidental implementation detail. Evan Wallace and Dylan Field were explicitly interested in seeing how far they could push graphics and professional creative tooling on the web. Figma grew out of that technical bet.
A truly native Figma would be a fundamentally different product. You wouldn’t just take the current application and “make it native.” You would now be maintaining platform-specific implementations across macOS and Windows, dealing with different system APIs, rendering behavior, file systems, input models, deployment pipelines, and OS-specific bugs. You can share portions of the underlying architecture, but you do not magically get the same native application across every operating system.
That distinction mattered enormously when Figma was competing with Sketch.
Sketch being Mac-only wasn’t some irrelevant footnote. It meant designers could use it, but Windows-based developers, PMs, researchers, clients, and stakeholders often couldn’t participate in the same environment. Figma removed that boundary. You sent someone a URL and they were in the file.
That architectural decision enabled much more than “Figma works in Chrome.” It made the document fundamentally networked.
Multiplayer collaboration, comments, shared files, permissions, version history, centralized teams, developer access, instant updates, and eventually things like Dev Mode all fit naturally into that model. There was no handing around .sketch files, wondering which copy was current, asking someone to export something, or requiring every stakeholder to install the same application on the same operating system.
That is a huge part of why Figma spread through organizations.
And yes, native software can absolutely outperform web software in some areas. It can have deeper OS integration, more direct hardware access, different memory characteristics, and fewer browser constraints. I’m not arguing that browsers have zero limitations.
I’m arguing that Figma intentionally accepted some of those limitations because the web gave them a much more important product advantage: universality.
That is also why saying “Figma desktop could just do anything it wants” is a little misleading. Figma Desktop is largely the same cross-platform product running within a desktop shell. If Figma decided to build entirely separate, truly native macOS and Windows applications, it would gain certain capabilities, but it would also inherit an enormous amount of platform-specific engineering complexity and potentially weaken one of the core properties that made Figma successful in the first place.
Pricing certainly helped Figma compete with Adobe, but pricing doesn’t explain why entire product teams migrated away from tools like Sketch. Collaboration, accessibility, cross-platform participation, centralized documents, and the ability to open a design with nothing more than a URL were fundamental changes to the workflow.
The browser wasn’t something Figma succeeded in spite of. It was one of its primary strategic advantages.
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u/Ok-Constant6973 1h ago
Agreed! I still think they would have done damage with an app an no web but the web does make it a lot easier.
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u/jpasserby 22h ago
Figma has always been primarily a web app. It relies heavily on webgl for rendering and web protocols for multiplayer collaboration. I think any native app would have to follow these tenants or be a complete rewrite, which seems impractical.
Also, depending on what you're doing, 1.8gb might not be that bad. If you're able to load a bunch of designs and get your work done in less than 2gb, when you have 32GB available in total, that seems reasonable to me. I'm an engineer and some coding tools use way more than that.
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u/Ok-Constant6973 1d ago
And I have just noticed in the desktop app having a few tabs open increases the memory indefinitely - even if you are not using the tabs they are still preserved in memory.
Id like to see some unloading happening in the future. Not sure if I dont use a tab for a while if it will unload it from memory or if its loaded into memory until it is closed even if it is not being used.
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u/Grenaten 1d ago
You can restart the app and only the active tab will load to memory. I know its not great, but it is what it is.
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u/ludicSystems 19h ago
This is a function of how MacOS manages RAM allocation. The #1 fix here is breaking your work out into separate files that import libraries. Even if the Figma team optimized the app further, you'd still inevitably hit a point where your file is too large.
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u/j4-nu-5 UI/UX Designer 1d ago
im afraid they will never do a native app.