Thank you for trying out the new Ditto! We are continuously releasing a lot of big changes to the product, and you’re one of the first to test it out in practice.
The New Ditto: What is it?
Ditto is getting easier to start, and easier to try — you can scale your usage to get going and solve your biggest pain points now.
Fit Ditto into your workflows immediately and build up your usage of Ditto as you go — you don’t need to have the perfect component library, or the perfect system, to get started.
Current product limitations of the beta
The beta is a work-in-progress and not all of Ditto’s features are available yet. Some limitations to be aware of:
Variants cannot be previewed in Figma yet. You can create and manage variants in the web app, but previewing variants in Figma designs is coming soon.
Developer IDs have changed in new Ditto. Developer IDs are managed on a project basis, as opposed to on a component library basis. There are also basic limitations to customizations of IDs.
As the beta progresses, we will continuously release improvements that bring in Ditto’s full feature set, including:
Variant previews in Figma
Character count limits on text items
Plurals for text items
Project exports
Slack notifications
Component library imports
Integrations with external tools, such as LaunchDarkly, Lokalise, and more.
Please note that since this is a beta version of Ditto, you may encounter some bugs or unexpected behavior. Please report any and all bugs to our team via the feedback form below—this’ll help us get them resolved as quickly as we can!
How to give beta feedback
Please submit any feedback, bugs, workarounds, or other thoughts via this Notion form:
Any and all feedback is valuable! As a design partner, you have a unique inside perspective on what feels natural, what you don’t like, and where we can improve.
Frequently asked questions
How can I migrate over my data from the old Ditto (projects, components), to work in a new beta project?
How can I migrate over my data from the old Ditto (projects, components), to work in a new beta project?
For now, we’re not doing any “mass migration” of data from old → new Ditto, because the systems work so differently. For example, you might not want to migrate over thousands of existing components from legacy Ditto, because you can accomplish the same thing by just linking text within a project in new Ditto. The same goes for projects; because the way you import, link, and sync back to Figma has improved so much in new Ditto, it might not make sense to transfer over your projects one-to-one.
That being said, our team is standing by to manage one-off migration requests for users making the switch. Just grab 15 minutes with our team to talk through the specifics of what you need, and we’ll help you through it!
My team has integrated with the old Ditto API. How does the new beta change developer integrations?
My team has integrated with the old Ditto API. How does the new beta change developer integrations?
Long story short, it shouldn’t change anything day-to-day — you can use both the legacy Ditto API and the new beta API at the same time.
In the new beta, developer integrations are managed at the project level, not at the component library level. This means that you can ship final copy from a beta project, without interfering with your other strings.
If you’d rather talk through your team’s specific use case of developer integrations, and what this change means for you, just grab a slot to talk to our team. We’ll help you through it!
Beta Release Notes
Monday, May 5th
⏪ Restore text changes
Made a change that you regret? Just visit the text item or component’s activity log and select the new “Restore” button to revert back to that version of the text.
Thursday, May 1st
🖼️ Frame-based navigation!
Navigate a Ditto project within the context of the Figma design frames! You can now choose between “list mode” — aka a list of text items — or new “frame mode” which will list text item instances grouped by frames that are linked from Figma files.
This makes it clearer where the text you’re looking at lives within the context of the broader designs. You can step between design previews with arrow keys, then click on any block or text item from the lefthand panel, and it will highlight it on the design preview.
Use list view to see every instance of a text item listed out one by one. But, if you’re coming in cold to review some text in a Ditto project, you’ll probably benefit from jumping into frame mode to understand where a text item fits into the broader story before you give feedback on the text in Ditto.
Wednesday, April 30th
⚠️ Updated Figma sync error messaging
We’ve improved and added more context to error messages for Figma sync failures due to token issues. Now, we show you a more specific error message for expired tokens. Also, both token error messages now contain a link directly to the user account page where you can re-connect to Figma.
Friday, April 18th
🧑💻 New Ditto Beta developer integrations
The Ditto beta now has access to new and improved developer integrations! This release includes new endpoints to fetching text from:
Projects
Text Items
Variables
Variants
Developer IDs are now being generated on a project basis in the beta (custom Dev IDs aren’t yet supported in the beta). However, you can use both legacy and new Ditto developer integrations simultaneously; just toggle between the legacy and new dev integrations from the developers page in the Ditto app (see image →)!
Thursday, April 10th
👭 Surfacing exact component matches
When creating a component, Ditto will now surface any library component that exactly matches that text during the publishing flow (in both plugin + web app).
Wednesday, March 26th
🔗 Add clickable links to comments
Links are now clickable in Ditto comments — share more context or add files right in Ditto!
Monday, March 24th
⚠️ Better error messages
When too many text layers to parse at once (>100) are selected in your Figma file, the Ditto plugin will display a full screen message is shown communicating this to you.
Thursday, March 20th
↗️ “Open Project in Ditto” improvements
The “Open project in Ditto” button in the Ditto plugin will now open the web app with the Design Previews view open by default. If you have any text that’s linked to Ditto in your Figma selection, that text will also be selected in the web app!
Thursday, March 20th
💈 Navigation Sidebar improvements
The lefthand sidebar has made some major improvements, including…
Collapse text blocks
Drag-and-drop to reorder text items and blocks
Drag-and-drop components
Wednesday, March 19th
🗃️ Organize components in folders
Now, you can move components into a component folder right from the edit panel. Select one or many components, and select “Move to folder” in the bottom of the edit panel, then select the right folder.
Friday, March 14th
🐛 Bug Fixes and Updates
Stale suggestion invalidation: Each time we display suggestions, we now run validation logic to filter out suggestions that are stale, such as hidden text, deleted text, text already linked to other items, recently edited text.
Improved InstaSync execution for text edits: We’ve improved the ways text edits are synced from Figma, to avoid circumstances that sometimes led to stale data and/or bogus conflicts.
FIXED: Plugin could crash if user makes first selection too quickly after linking file to new project
FIXED: Instance count data not updating when deleting linked text layers
FIXED: Individual text layer suggestions were incorrectly showing up for text items in blocks. Now, text layers linked to text items in blocks will only show block suggestions.
Thursday, March 13th
💬 Comment on Components
You can now create comment threads on components in the North Star Library! These are visible in the web app on the library page.
The main Comments panel, with nothing selected, shows a paginated view of all comment threads for the entire workspace library.
If a single component is selected, you can see all comments for that component in the Comments panel. You can create a new comment thread, or see the most recent unresolved comment (if any) in the Edit panel.
Library comments are directly connected to the library component. These Library comments are only visible in the library, not on instances of that component in projects.
Users should receive email notifications for mentions, replies and resolved comments, as well as notifications in the 🔔 section of the web app. You will also see unread comment notifications in the Discussion Panel on the Home screen.
Wednesday, March 5th
📚 Now Live: The Library!
You know have the power to publish, share, and reuse text across projects with the library!
Publish a text item to the library as a component — with all metadata, tags, and linked text preserved — to build your product text source of truth, and reuse that text item in other projects
Review every instance of that component from one view
Make an edit once, in your library, and watch that change sync anywhere that component is used
Manually link any text layer to a component from the library
Give designers or other teammates an easier place to start with a library of pre-approved text to pull from
Monday, February 24th
📂 Delete or rename folders
You can now delete a folder in your Ditto workspace; if a folder has items (components, other folders) you will see a confirmation modal appear, to make sure you want to delete.
Upon folder deletion, the deleted folder's children are moved into the parent folder
You can also rename your folders
Friday, February 21st
🔗 Manual linking for text items!
You now have the ability to manually link a selected text item! When selecting a single unlinked text layer selected in Figma, you can access a flow through the "Link" button which enables you to select a text item in the project to link the text layer to.
Wednesday, February 19th
Improvements to selection and navigation in the Ditto plugin for Figma
Selection and navigation is now more intuitive in the Ditto plugin for Figma. It’s much easier to drill down into specific text items, and navigate between text items and blocks.
Updated look of the Selected panel in the figma plugin
Updated on-click behavior for text items and blocks
Tuesday, February 11th
🐛 Bug fix: Newly imported text items will no longer receive unexpected text conflicts
Tuesday, February 11th
🔖 Autosave metadata fields
Ditto will now autosave any updates you make to metadata, no saving required. Work as fast as you like, and Ditto will keep your metadata up to date (in both web app and Figma plugin).
Wednesday, February 5th
🔙 New “Back” button to revisit previous selections
While you’re clicking around your Figma file with the Ditto plugin open, you can now jump back to previous selections with a handy “back” button! This works across text items, nodes, or pages, making it easier to jump around your Figma file without getting lost.
Friday, January 31st
🟣 Figma layer statuses (on by default)
Statuses of any layers synced between Ditto <> Figma will now automatically populate the text status in layer names.
Track the status of the text in your Figma file with color-coded layer names…
🔴 Work in Progress
🟡 Ready for Review
🟢 Final
Thursday, January 30th
📝 Rich text edits in the Ditto changelog
You can now see all changes in the activity log, including styling differences. The activity log will now show a rich text diff for the text item edited change item.
Thursday, January 30th
📏 Minimize the Ditto plugin in your Figma file!
Doing deep work in Figma, but want to keep your Ditto plugin open so your text stays up to date?
You can now minimize your Ditto plugin from the top right corner of your nav bar!
You can also snap the plugin to a specific position, just select the three dot menu and select your preferred plugin position.
Friday, January 17th
🛍️ Jump through text item instances
You can now jump through all instances of a selected text item across your Figma file, all from the blue “Instances” banner at the top of the Figma plugin.
Jump through all instances of a linked text item, across all pages
Jump through each suggestion of unlinked text items to import and link to a selected text item
Jump through all instances of existing Ditto Text Items that we suggest linking a selected text item to, instead of importing as new
Jump through all linked instances of a text item
Jump through all repeat instances Ditto finds
See existing linked text items you could link to
Thursday, January 16th
🚦 Show status in Figma layer names: You can now sync the status of text items back to the layer name in Figma, to indicate what text is in progress, ready for review, or final.
To turn on these capabilities, select the three dot menu in the Figma plugin, hover over settings, and select “Show Status Indicators”.
