Working with Figma on iPad
If you are a designer, there are often situations in which you should change designs on the way or in travel. In these cases, always having a laptop with you is a headache, especially if you do backpacking adventures like me.
But I often carry an iPad with me, which is lighter and more compact. Yep, as designer we don’t use only figma, there are other tools like Notion, G Suite, … which are our tools, but most of them are workable on iPad, but the story is different about Figma. So I had the idea of working with Figma on iPad and I face a lot of challenges because the formal Figma app for iPad doesn’t support editing and you can only view the files and prototypes which is sucks.
In this note, I want to share my foundings and tell you how I solved my problem. There are multiple methods to access Figma on this device but every one of them have some flaws and advantage which will be review in the following.
Method 1: Use Figma App
Figma has a native application for both iOS and Android also a separate app for FigJam on iPad which has been more tailored for touch screen but the Figma app does not support file editing and you can only do:
- Browse the files and view them
- Comment on files and review comments
- View and use the prototypes
- Mirroring designed and check real-time changes
So, If you want to do the work which is listed above, easy, to use the app on your iPad and FigJam app on iPad is awesome and I use it very frequently, However, most of us need to edit files but there is no option to edit Figma files on this method.
Method 2: Use a browser to use Figma
Since Figma is web-based, you can access it through any browser on your iPad, allowing you to edit files. However, installing and using custom fonts is near impossible for the web on an iPad.
On newer iPads, running iPadOS, you can install custom fonts using tools like iFont or through the built-in settings (Settings -> General -> Fonts). But even after installing fonts, browsers like Safari or Chrome can’t access them, and the Figma web app won’t list them. Figma only supports Google Fonts and a few other popular fonts by default. If you’re using Figma’s Organization plan, you can import custom fonts organization-wide, which might solve this issue.
If your design files only use Google Fonts, this method works fine. But if your files rely on custom fonts, you won’t be able to edit text or text-related elements. You can still move objects and perform other tasks, but text editing will be off-limits.
Method 3: Use Figurative Software
A third-party app called Figurative offers a solution to the limitations of the official Figma app. It’s a free app for iPad that allows you to install custom fonts and provides better support for Apple Pencil, keyboard, and mouse interactions.
How to use it?
After downloading and opening Figurative, you’ll need to log in to your Figma account. Then, click on more options (…) at the top-right corner to access the menu, which includes a basic guide on using Figurative. To install custom fonts, you’ll need to download an additional app called Fontcase. Follow the steps in Fontcase to install the necessary font profiles, and you’ll be able to edit text with custom fonts in your Figma files.
Conclusion
I use Figurative (Method 3) to edit Figma files on my iPad, but it’s important to remember that the iPad has limited resources, and iOS’s resource management can cause issues when editing large files or publishing them. You might run into RAM-related problems. For this reason, I don’t recommend using an iPad as your primary design tool, but as a backup device, it can be extremely handy.
