I’m struggling with creating a smooth workflow between design and development teams. We can’t use the paid developer features, so I need to find alternatives.
Problems I’m facing:
• When I keep finalized designs in my main working file, any updates to components automatically change the developer-ready screens. This creates confusion when devs are coding from specs that suddenly look different.
• Copying screens to a separate handoff file causes major issues - lots of elements don’t transfer properly or get corrupted during the process.
• Someone suggested breaking the link between components and instances, but that removes all the benefits of using a design system.
• I experimented with creating image exports in a dedicated developer file, but they come out pixelated and hard to read unless I manually stitch multiple screenshots together (which takes forever).
Our design files get updated regularly, so we need a reliable way to hand off specific versions to developers while continuing to iterate. The workflow needs to preserve design fidelity and provide clear specifications.
Has anyone found effective workarounds for managing design handoffs without the premium developer tools? Looking for practical solutions that don’t compromise quality.
honestly we just started versioning our files with dates in the filename like “app-design-v2.1-dec15.fig” - sounds basic but it works. devs get access to the frozen version while we keep iterating in the main file. takes some discipline but way better than dealing with corrupted transfers or broken components.
We established a weekly handoff cadence that streamlined everything. Every Friday afternoon, I export screens at 2x resolution as PNG files and organize them in a shared folder with clear naming conventions like “homepage-mobile-v23-handoff-dec15.png”. The key is setting your export frame backgrounds to white and using consistent artboard sizing, which eliminates the pixelation issues mentioned. Developers get clean, readable specs that never change while I continue working in the main file. We also maintain a simple spreadsheet to track screens in development, their version numbers, and handoff dates, preventing confusion from auto-updating components affecting active work. The process takes about 45 minutes each week but completely addresses our version control headaches. Developers actually prefer the static exports because they can mark up the images directly and reference them offline.
What saved us was implementing a simple annotation system directly in our main files. Instead of copying or duplicating anything, we just add a small text layer next to each screen with version numbers and lock dates - something like “v1.2 - locked for dev 12/20”. When developers start working on a screen, we screenshot that exact state and paste it as an image overlay on a separate page within the same file. The original stays linked to components for our iterations, but devs can always reference the locked image version. We also started using the comment feature heavily to mark which elements are finalized versus still in progress. The workflow is much cleaner than managing multiple files and there’s zero corruption since everything lives in one place. Developers know exactly which version they should be coding from and we can keep iterating without breaking their workflow.
We solved this by creating a dedicated “handoff branch” using file duplication at specific milestones. Before any major handoff, we duplicate the entire project file and immediately break all component connections in the copy using the detach function. Yes, you lose the design system benefits in that specific file, but it freezes everything exactly as intended for development. The original file stays intact with all components linked for continued iteration. We also started exporting key screens as high-res PDFs alongside the frozen Figma file - developers appreciate having both the interactive specs and static references that never change. The PDF export quality is much better than screenshots and includes proper dimensions. Takes about 30 minutes per handoff but eliminates all the confusion and corrupted elements we used to deal with.
try using figma’s version history feature - whenever you need to handoff just make a comment in the file saying “DEV FREEZE v1.3” or whatever, then devs can always go back to that exact version through the history panel. keeps everything in one file but they can see the frozen state while you keep working. not perfect but way less hassle than duplicating files