Figma: view. comment. mirror.

Review by eFreeware

If you work in Figma on a desktop and find yourself needing to check a file, answer a comment or show a design to someone while you are away from your computer, this is the app built for that. It is Figma's official Android client, and it puts your design files, boards, decks and prototypes on a phone screen without pretending the phone is where the real work happens.

The appeal is not drawing or editing. It is staying in the loop: reading a file on the subway, replying to a teammate's note between meetings, playing a prototype in front of someone who asked to see it, or holding your phone up next to a desktop so the design you are tweaking appears on the smaller screen as you change it.

Figma is free, carries no ads and has no in-app purchases, which matters for a tool you might ask an entire team to install. It has been on Android since May 2017, sits at a 4.1 average across more than 64,000 ratings and has passed five million installs, so it is a well-established piece of software rather than a new experiment.

Reading and finding your files on a phone

The app opens onto your Figma work: Design files, Make files, Slides decks and FigJam boards. You can look up a file by name if you know what you are after, or browse your recent files when you do not. Moving between pages and flows inside a file is handled in the app, so a large document does not have to be one long scroll.

That combination covers the most common reason I would reach for this on a phone. Someone sends a link or asks about a screen, and you want to see the actual thing rather than a screenshot pasted into a chat. Because the app is tied to your team's work, what you see reflects the project rather than a copy that went stale.

For FigJam boards specifically, the mobile view is about reading and responding rather than building out a workshop from scratch. I would treat it as a way to catch up on what a team has put together and add your own notes, not as a replacement for the desktop canvas.

Comments, mentions and staying reachable

Commenting is the feature that gives the mobile app most of its value. You can add comments and mention teammates in Figma Design, Slides and FigJam files, get notified when someone posts a new comment or replies, and resolve threads as they are dealt with. Every thread is collected in one place, which is a sensible way to handle feedback when you are reading on a small screen rather than scanning a canvas.

The notification side is what turns this from a viewer into something you keep installed. If a client or a colleague leaves a note on a frame, you can answer it from the phone instead of adding it to a list of things to do once you are back at a desk. Resolving a thread from the same place keeps the file tidy for everyone else.

Sharing works alongside commenting. You can invite collaborators and send links to your files from the app, so handing a design to someone new does not require a detour to a computer. Permissions can also be adjusted on the fly, which is useful when you need to change who can view or edit a file while a review is happening.

Prototypes, mirroring and on-device testing

Prototypes get proper treatment here. You can play and replay them in full screen, adjust the scaling and switch hotspot hints on or off. Seeing a flow at full size on a real handset is a different experience from clicking through it in a desktop preview window, and it is the sort of check that catches problems early.

Mirroring is the feature I find most interesting. Selected frames are synced from the desktop to your device, and edits made on the computer show up on the phone as they happen. That makes the phone a second display for reviewing a design at a realistic size, and the app scales the preview to suit the device screen.

Make files extend the same idea to mobile prototypes. You can test them and validate how interactions behave on the device, then share a Make with collaborators for review and approval. For anyone building touch interfaces, running the thing on an actual phone is the point at which a design either holds together or does not.

Slides are supported for viewing and commenting in both landscape and portrait, so a deck can be read whichever way you are holding the phone. It is a viewing and feedback tool rather than a place to assemble a presentation from nothing.

What the app expects from you

The clearest requirement is that this is a companion. Mirroring only makes sense with a desktop session running, so the app is a window into work that exists elsewhere. Anyone hoping to design from an Android device alone will find the app built around reviewing, commenting and presenting instead.

Working across teams, plans, projects and accounts is supported, which is convenient for freelancers and agency people who move between clients, but it also reflects the assumption that you already have a Figma setup with files in it. It is the mobile face of an existing workspace.

On the practical side, it is free with no ads and no in-app purchases, and the current release is a maintenance update focused on bug fixes and performance improvements rather than a batch of new features. That is a reasonable sign for a tool people rely on for quick checks during the day.

The people this fits

The natural audience is anyone who already works in Figma and wants their files within reach: product designers reviewing a flow on a real handset, developers checking spacing and states against a spec, researchers and writers who need to read a prototype and leave comments, and managers or clients who have been invited into a file and want to see it without installing desktop software.

It also suits teams that run review cycles with people in different places. If feedback normally arrives as comments and mentions, the phone becomes a reasonable place to answer them, and the shared thread view means nothing gets lost between devices.

I would think of it less as a design tool and more as the part of Figma you carry. If your work happens entirely on a computer and you never need to look at a file while out, the app will sit unused; if you regularly need to see, show or respond to a design away from your desk, it deserves a spot on the home screen.

A companion worth installing for Figma users

Figma for Android does a focused job well: it lets you read your files, comment and resolve threads, share links, adjust permissions, play and test prototypes, mirror frames live from a desktop and review Slides decks in either orientation. It is free, with no ads or purchases to work around, and the 4.1 average across a large number of ratings suggests it holds up for the everyday tasks it is meant to handle.

The trade-off is scope. This is a mobile companion to a desktop workspace, so its value depends on you already having files to open and, for mirroring, a computer running alongside it. Judged on that basis, it is a sensible install for designers, developers and collaborators who want their Figma work available wherever they happen to be.

If you spend your days in Figma and your phone is always with you, this closes a gap that used to require a laptop. If your design work stays at a desk and you rarely need to answer a comment on the move, there is little here that will pull you in.

What's new in version 26.37.1

Bug fixes & performance improvements