File and Assets in the Left Sidebar

Figma Design files have four distinct interactive areas: a toolbar, two panels, and a scrollable canvas. These areas allow you to access, create and adjust elements of your design. This page covers the important functions of the left sidebar, also known as the navigation panel.

View Figma’s tour of layers and pages in the left sidebar

File Tab

The file tab allows you to navigate within the specific design file you have open. There are two main sections within this tab: pages and layers.

Pages

A Figma design file can have multiple pages. All pages within a given Figma Design file are listed in the pages section.

Each page has a seemingly infinite canvas on which you can create designs. Using pages can help organize your files and help Figma run faster (having hundreds of items on a given page can make it run slower than if you spread them out across multiple pages).

Layers

The layers section works very similarly to layers panels in other design software. It shows you all of the layers on the open page.

Layers are typically organized in sections, frames and groups. Figma uses different icons to identify the type of objects.

Assets Tab

The assets tab lets you see Figma components (reusable designed elements) that were made in the file you have open or that are available by connecting to a library.