Using Figma's Sections Feature: A Complete Guide

Figma's Sections feature has become an indispensable tool for designers working on complex projects. Whether you're managing a multi-screen mobile app, a comprehensive design system, or a large website prototype, Sections help you organize your canvas, streamline collaboration, and simplify prototyping workflows. Our /services/web-development/ team regularly uses Sections to maintain clarity across large-scale projects.

What Are Figma Sections?

Sections in Figma are a specialized tool that allows you to group and organize content on your canvas for ideation, design, and prototyping purposes. Unlike frames or groups, Sections are top-level elements that sit directly on your canvas, making them ideal for organizing entire areas of your project into logical groupings.

A Section in Figma appears as a labeled rectangular area that can contain frames, components, text, images, and other design elements. The key distinction is that Sections can contain all layer types, including other Sections, but they cannot be contained within frames or groups. This hierarchy makes Sections particularly useful for organizing at the highest level of your project structure.

How to Create Sections in Figma

Creating Sections in Figma is straightforward, and Figma provides multiple methods to accommodate different working styles. Understanding all three methods will help you choose the most efficient approach for any situation.

Organizing Your Canvas with Sections

Effective canvas organization is crucial when working on complex projects, and Sections provide the tools you need to maintain clarity and navigability throughout your design file. This organizational approach becomes especially valuable when managing web development projects that involve multiple stakeholders and handoff points.

Marking Sections as Ready for Development

For teams that bridge design and development, the "Mark as ready for dev" feature provides a clear signal that a Section's contents are finalized and ready for implementation. Select a Section, then click the "Mark as ready for dev" option in the right sidebar or context menu. The Section receives a visual indicator that developers can recognize at a glance.

This feature supports iterative workflows where different parts of your design may be at different stages of completion. If you make changes to a Section after marking it ready for development, Figma automatically updates its status to "Changed," prompting you to provide context for the modifications.

Using Sections in Prototyping

Perhaps the most powerful application of Sections is in prototyping, where they can dramatically simplify your connection structure and create more intuitive user flows.

The Problem with Traditional Prototype Connections

In traditional prototyping without Sections, every interaction that navigates between screens requires a specific connection to a specific destination frame. Consider an e-commerce app where users can browse products and then navigate to a checkout flow. Without Sections, the back button needs a fixed frame to return users to--which means it can only return to one specific page, not the page the user actually came from.

How Sections Solve Navigation Challenges

Sections solve this problem by introducing smart navigation. When you create a prototype connection to a Section rather than a specific frame, Figma remembers the last-visited frame within that Section and automatically returns to it. This behavior mirrors how actual apps work--returning users to their previous context rather than a fixed starting point.

For example, you would create two Sections: a "Browse" Section containing all your product listing pages, and a "Checkout" Section containing your checkout flow screens. Your checkout back button would connect to the Browse Section rather than any specific frame. Now, no matter which product page a user came from, clicking "Continue Shopping" returns them to that exact page.

Reducing Connection Complexity

Beyond improving user navigation, Sections reduce the number of connections you need to create and maintain. If you have five product pages that all need to navigate to checkout, and checkout needs to navigate back to all five, you would need ten separate connections without Sections. With Sections, you can connect all five product pages to the checkout Section with a single connection each, and create a single connection from checkout back to the browse Section. The total drops from ten connections to six, and the prototype's behavior is actually better.

Advanced Features and Tips

Sections offer additional capabilities that can enhance your workflow when used strategically.

Common Use Cases and Examples

Conclusion

Figma's Sections feature addresses fundamental challenges in design file organization and prototyping. By providing a way to group related content at the highest level, Sections make large files navigable and comprehensible. By enabling smart navigation that remembers user context, Sections create more realistic prototypes with fewer connections. By supporting features like "Ready for dev" status and section-level sharing, Sections bridge the gap between design exploration and production implementation.

Whether you're working on a simple project or a complex application, incorporating Sections into your workflow will improve your organization, reduce your prototyping complexity, and enhance collaboration with your team. Our /services/ui-ux-design/ experts recommend Sections as a foundational practice for any design project involving multiple screens or complex user flows.

Sources

1. Figma Help Center: Organize your canvas with sections
2. Figma Help Center: Use sections in prototyping
3. The Designership: How to Speed Up Prototyping by 50% with Figma Sections