Any update on component variants?

Hi,
I am a Designer have been checking out Penpot on off for a while. Something very important in my workflow is the use of Variants. It simply is one of the most important features in a design tool. The current way to create variants in penpot doesn’t seem intutive. It’s quite confusing and it doesn’t feel like variants but seperate components just under the same component name. I think right now this is one of the main things stopping me from moving over completelty from figma.

I saw some threads on variants but they were from mid 2023 and before. Will there be a change on this structure on how component variants are created?

3 Likes

Hello!

We are working on it. The definition is already in place, and we expect to start implementing it soon. You can find more information in this public epic:

1 Like

Thanks @carolina.portugal Looks good. Looking forward to this.

I’m just wondering: when you say variants, are you referring to Penpot’s component functionality, or more specifically, it component instance functionality where a Penpot component is comprised of 2 parts: the main component and that component’s instance/s?

@josel In figma the instance is just a linked copy of the component. If the component changes, the instance will change (unless overridden). Yes this is possible in penpot too.

But more specifically we would need to be able to set properties to these components. A different combination of properties can be called a variant. eg. icon-right (true/false), button-type(outline, text, filled), size(small, big) etc.

Since developers also work with a similar workflow in developing components, usually if the design team and dev team are in sync, the workflow is much smoother. This seems to be missing in penpot.