Unpopular opinion: locking layers is a crutch, not a shortcut

Got told by a senior designer I was wasting time locking layers instead of just organizing my groups properly in Figma. Switched to naming everything clearly and grouping by function, and now I navigate faster than I ever did with locks.

2 comments

2 Comments

reese5515d ago

Oh man, I gotta respectfully disagree with this one. Locking layers is absolutely a shortcut if you're working on a file with 80+ artboards and other people moving stuff around while you're trying to tweak one little component. I've been burned too many times by a teammate accidentally dragging a background layer I had perfectly aligned. Clear naming helps for sure, but it doesn't stop someone from grabbing three layers at once by accident. Locks give me peace of mind when I'm zoomed into pixel details, and that's worth the extra click. Your mileage may vary depending on team size though.

fiona_murray4d ago

The whole "just organize better" thing works fine until you're dealing with a design system file where a hundred people touch the same components daily. I've seen interns grab and move entire auto-layout frames because they thought they were selecting the text inside. Clear naming helps you find things, sure, but it doesn't stop a mouse slip from ruining an hour of alignment work. Locks are like insurance for your layout structure, especially when you have nested symbols and constraints that break if something gets nudged two pixels to the left. Plus there's that specific pain of trying to edit a shadow or border radius on a locked group where everything underneath is unlocked and wiggling around. Some of us need both systems running at once.