When Figma announced Motion at Config, I got excited.
Finally.
A native animation tool inside Figma.
No plugins. No weird workflows. No jumping between tools.
Then I actually used it.
And honestly... what happened here?
It Feels Weirdly Unfinished
This isn't a "beta has bugs" complaint.
I expect bugs.
What surprised me was how many basic UX decisions felt wrong.
The timeline feels awkward.
Interactions feel inconsistent.
Simple actions somehow take more clicks than they should.
Why Is It So Slow?
The biggest problem isn't missing features.
It's the feeling.
Everything feels heavy.
Dragging through the timeline feels heavy.
Selecting things feels heavy.
Working on larger files feels heavy.
It's hard to explain, but the whole experience lacks that polished "Figma feeling" we're used to.
The best Figma products usually disappear and let you focus on your work.
Motion constantly reminds you that you're using Motion.
Missing Things You'd Expect To Exist
After a few hours I kept running into walls.
Want to do advanced text animation?
Good luck.
Want to animate gradients?
Limited.
Want more sophisticated motion workflows?
You'll hit restrictions quickly.
Want nested animation systems?
Not really.
For a company with Figma's resources, I expected much more from version one.
The Strange Part
There are already plugins solving many of these problems.
Whether it's MotionKit, Figmotion, or other animation tools in the ecosystem, users have been doing advanced motion work inside Figma for years.
So naturally I expected Figma to study what works and build something better.
Instead it feels like they reinvented the wheel and somehow made it square.
It Doesn't Feel Like Figma
This is probably my biggest criticism.
The best Figma features feel obvious.
You open them and immediately understand the workflow.
Motion feels like the opposite.
It feels like a separate product that got dropped into Figma.
The UX feels disconnected from the rest of the platform.
The performance feels off.
The workflow feels overcomplicated.
At times it genuinely felt like somebody shipped the first prototype and called it a beta.
Final Thoughts
I really want Motion to succeed.
A first-party animation tool inside Figma would be amazing for designers.
But right now?
I'm not frustrated because it's missing features.
I'm frustrated because it doesn't feel finished.
The whole thing feels surprisingly rough, surprisingly slow, and surprisingly difficult to enjoy.
Maybe it'll become great in a year.
Today, it feels less like a polished Figma product and more like a proof of concept that escaped into production.
