I tried Figma and I actually like it

A tool that shaped my early career

I’ve been using Sketch for a very long time. After spending what felt like too many years inside Adobe’s suite, Sketch felt like fresh air.

When I started getting paid to design, my first boss convinced me to try Sketch. I already knew my way around Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop. I knew the tools, the menus, the shortcuts. But I never enjoyed the process. It always felt like slicing beef with a chainsaw—too heavy for what I needed.

Back then there was no Adobe Xd. Illustrator and Photoshop were what we used for interface design, even if they weren’t built for it.

Sketch was different. It was made for screens. It thought in pixels, artboards, and UI components. It had export presets for multiple resolutions, shared styles for consistency, symbols for reusable components, and a lightweight performance that made designing feel fast. It was built around the job I was actually doing.

That alone was enough to keep me around.

Twenty years inside the garden

After that, going back to Adobe wasn’t even on the table. Around the same time, my Windows phase was long gone. I had fully embraced Apple.

For almost two decades I lived inside macOS. Sketch became the default. I didn’t even look elsewhere. Why would I? It worked, it felt good, and it was part of my daily routine.

In 2020, things got even more surreal: I landed a job at Sketch. Being able to contribute to a product I actively used every single day was something special. I got to see the tool from the inside while still relying on it for real work.

But a few years later, I started squinting at almost everything Apple was doing. Especially on the software side. I’ve written about it before. The “Liquid Glass” moment was just the last drop for me.

That’s when I started looking elsewhere.

Linux changes everything

I moved to Linux.

If I wasn’t considering Adobe during my macOS years, it definitely wasn’t becoming an option now. Yes, technically there are ways to make it work. But I don’t like building my workflow on top of a house of cards.

The real problem? Sketch is macOS only.
Even if I wanted to stay, I couldn’t.

So I started looking for alternatives on Linux. I tried a few, but none of them felt right. Some were promising, but didn’t feel polished. Others didn’t feel inspiring enough for something I’d stare at for hours every day.

The best one I found was Penpot.

The almost right choice

Penpot being open source was a huge plus. The fact that I could self-host it made it even more attractive. On paper, it checked many boxes.

But in practice, it fell short.

Years of muscle memory don’t just disappear. Many of the keyboard shortcuts I relied on in Sketch simply didn’t exist. For example, something as simple as Ctrl + Shift + Down to increase a shape’s height wasn’t there. From what I could tell, users were expected to tweak dimensions in the right-hand panel instead.

That broke my flow.

I kept trying. I really did. Mostly because I didn’t want to use Figma. And that was the only real alternative.

Then I hit another wall: the Penpot web app wouldn’t load on Brave on my iPad. It worked on Safari, but that’s not the browser I use anymore. Between the shortcut friction and that limitation, I decided to move on.

So I finally created a Figma account.

The unexpected comfort

And guess what…

The shortcuts worked exactly how I expected. Sometimes I don’t even know if a shortcut exists. I just press what makes sense in my head—and it works.

The web app loads fine on my iPad too. I’m not designing on an iPad, of course. But sometimes I need to check a file or export something. That flexibility matters.

After a month using Figma, I have to admit: it’s been comfortable. Surprisingly comfortable for someone coming from Sketch.

I’ve been using color variables more than I ever did before. I’m leaning heavily on typography styles. And auto layout—while Sketch has it too—feels snappier and more predictable in Figma. Components combined with auto layout frames make building screens incredibly fast.

There are things that annoy me, though.

For example, imagine you have a typography style for button labels. Then you create a button component with variants—primary, secondary, danger. You want the same font, size, spacing, and weight across them all. But you need different text colors or underlines per variant.

Changing the color inside the typography style changes it everywhere.

My workaround has been unlinking the style from the label before adjusting the color. It works, but it doesn’t feel ideal.

The web app trade-offs

Being a web app has upsides. I can install Figma inside my Linux setup and get a clean, toolbar-less window for an immersive experience while designing.

The downside? Brave eats RAM. And I keep Figma open for weeks at a time.

Performance itself has been solid. I can’t complain there.

Another huge plus is ecosystem. It feels like the entire industry is using Figma. Finding plugins is easy.

On Sketch I used a contrast checker plugin called Cluse. It helped me ensure accessible color contrast. In Figma? Contrast checking is built in. No plugin needed.

Fonts are another story.

Because it’s browser-based, Figma can’t just access system fonts the way a native app can. There’s a companion app for that—but it’s only available for Windows and macOS. Linux users are out of luck.

Well, not entirely. There are community tools that mimic the same behavior. And you’re not limited to system defaults either. You can use anything available on Google Fonts.

At first that felt limiting. But most of what I design ends up on the web anyway. Using Google Fonts often makes implementation easier, not harder.

Another thing that kept me away from Figma for years was the lack of “real” files. Because it runs in the browser, there’s nothing sitting in a folder that I can copy, archive, or back up manually. That always made me uncomfortable. I like owning my files.

But here’s the irony: I spent 20 years carefully backing up .sketch files from Sketch… and now, on Linux, I can’t even open them. They’re safely stored, neatly archived—and effectively unusable without a Mac. That realization made the whole “no local files” argument feel a lot less solid.

Free tier realities

I’ve been using Figma’s free tier.

Not because 5€/month is outrageous. But because I genuinely don’t need the extra features right now.

The only thing I truly miss isn’t even a design feature. It’s organization.

The free tier gives you unlimited drafts, but only a very limited number of projects. So unless you pay, everything lives inside the drafts folder. No real structure.

I know this will annoy me at some point. But for now, I’m riding the free wave.

I’m not a design team. It’s just me. And I’m not designing full time either—I’m also developing. My work doesn’t depend entirely on Figma, and I don’t need their developer tools because I already have access to the files.

So paying just to create “folders” feels a bit odd.

The plot twist

I didn’t want to use Figma. I avoided it for years. Mostly out of loyalty. Partly out of stubbornness.

But here I am.

Working on Linux. Designing in a browser. Surprisingly comfortable. Even enjoying it.

Sometimes the tool you resist the most ends up fitting you better than the one you swore by for 20 years.

Takeaways

Switching tools after two decades feels dramatic, but sometimes it’s just practical. My move to Linux forced my hand, and what started as a compromise ended up being a solid workflow shift.

Figma surprised me. The shortcuts feel natural, auto layout is powerful, and the ecosystem is hard to beat. It’s not perfect, especially around styles and fonts, but it’s quite good—and sometimes that’s more than enough.

Loyalty to tools is understandable. But comfort can exist outside of habit. And that’s been the biggest surprise of all.