Using Figma in Japanese — A Complete Guide to Language Settings, Menu Localization, and UI Coverage
“I’d like to use Figma in Japanese.” “The English menus slow me down.” — These are common starting points for designers new to Figma, or teams whose working language is Japanese.
The good news: Figma officially supports Japanese as a UI language. From the settings panel, you can switch the entire interface — menus, tooltips, dialogs — into Japanese in a few clicks, which removes a real friction point for anyone less comfortable with English UI.
This article walks through how to set Figma to Japanese, what gets localized and what doesn’t, the current state of menu localization, and the common pitfalls to know about, written for designers planning to use Japanese as their working UI.
What you’ll get from this article
- The current state of Figma’s Japanese UI support and how to enable it from settings
- Which menus, tooltips, and panels are localized — and which stay in English
- Why the UI language is independent of the language inside your design data (a common point of confusion)
- What to do when the language setting doesn’t take effect or only some parts switch
- How plugin localization works (separate from Figma itself)
Related articles
This article focuses on switching Figma’s UI to Japanese. For the rendering accuracy of Japanese text inside designs (fonts, baselines, line height), see the Japanese Text Fidelity Guide. For the bigger picture of moving from XD into a Japanese Figma environment, see the XD → Figma migration practical guide.
📝 Introduction — When you want Figma in Japanese
People who search for “Figma in Japanese” usually fall into a few patterns:
- Just starting with Figma: English menu names aren’t intuitive yet, and the UI itself becomes friction
- Team members prefer a Japanese environment: not everyone on the team is equally comfortable with English
- For education or learning: Japanese learning materials map more cleanly to a Japanese UI
- Migrating from a tool with Japanese UI (like XD): the team wants to keep the Japanese UI as a continuity bridge while learning Figma
In every case, Figma’s UI can be switched to Japanese with a single language setting, so it pays to switch early — before friction with English builds up. The setting itself takes only a few clicks.
🌐 How Figma supports Japanese as a UI language
Figma officially supports Japanese as a UI language, and the localization covers the editor, settings, and dialog UIs broadly. Both new and existing accounts can switch over by changing a single setting.
Two things to keep in mind
- What gets translated is the application UI (menus, tooltips, settings, dialogs). The content inside your designs is unaffected.
- The setting is per-account, so the same language preference follows you across the web app, desktop apps, and other devices when you sign in (mobile apps typically follow the OS language setting).
So when we say “switching Figma to Japanese”, what’s actually changing is the tool you operate with — not the design itself. Your designs aren’t auto-translated. Keeping that distinction clear up front avoids confusion later. We dig into this in UI language and design content are separate things.
⚙️ Switching Figma’s UI to Japanese
The language change happens in Figma’s Settings panel, and the setting is shared between the web and desktop apps.
Web and desktop (the same flow)
- Click your account icon in the top-left
- Choose Settings from the menu
- Open the Language entry inside Settings
- Select 日本語 (Japanese) from the language dropdown
- After saving, reload the page (web) or restart the app (desktop) — the UI switches to Japanese
The exact menu names and layout of the settings panel can change with Figma updates. For the latest steps, also check Figma’s official help under “Language settings”.
Reload or restart after switching
Right after switching, parts of the UI may temporarily stay in the old language. Reloading the browser (web) or restarting the app (desktop, Mac/Windows) finishes the transition. If parts still stay in English after that, see Common pitfalls when switching to Japanese UI.
Mobile apps (iOS / Android)
For Figma’s mobile apps, the display language typically follows the device’s OS language setting. Set your OS to Japanese and the mobile app will display in Japanese. As of writing, there’s no in-app language toggle independent of the OS setting.
📋 What gets localized — and what stays in English
Figma’s Japanese UI focuses on the application’s interactive surfaces. It doesn’t touch your design data or community content. Below is a snapshot of what is and isn’t localized.
| Surface | Localized? | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Top menu / file menu | ✅ Yes | 「ファイル」「編集」「表示」 (File / Edit / View) and other primary menus are translated |
| Toolbars / property panels | ✅ Yes | Layers / Assets / Design / Prototype / Inspect — the major panels are covered |
| Right-click / dialogs | ✅ Yes | The bulk of action menus is localized |
| Settings / account management | ✅ Yes | Setting names, descriptions, notification messages |
| Official help / docs | ⚠️ Partial | Some pages are localized, others aren’t. New-feature explanations tend to land in English first |
| Figma Community content | ❌ No | Stays in whatever language the author wrote it in (mostly English). Figma doesn’t translate community submissions |
| Plugin UIs | ❌ Plugin’s choice | Independent of Figma’s language setting. Each plugin decides whether to localize |
| Design data (text content, layer names) | ❌ No | Stays exactly as you typed it. UI language doesn’t touch user-authored content |
The one-line summary: the UI you operate with becomes Japanese, while the designs you create stay in whatever language you authored them in.
🗂️ Menu localization — how far does it go?
When people say “the menus aren’t in Japanese”, they’re usually expecting a more specific scope to be covered. Figma’s Japanese UI localizes the major editor menus pretty thoroughly, but a few caveats are worth knowing.
Menus that are localized
- Top bar: File / Edit / View / Object / Text / Arrange / Plugins / Help, etc.
- Right-click (context) menus: Copy / Paste / Group / Frame selection / Create component, and other action menus
- Side panels: Layers / Assets / Design / Prototype / Inspect
- Settings / account: User profile / notification preferences / privacy / language settings, etc.
What’s slower to localize, or stays in English
- Newly released features: New items can stay in English for a while; they get localized in subsequent translation updates
- Domain-specific katakana terms: Terms like 「オートレイアウト」(Auto Layout), 「フレーム」(Frame), 「コンポーネント」(Component) are written in katakana rather than forced Japanese translations — modern, common practice
- Beta features and third-party integrations: Translation tends to lag, and these may stay in English
- Some community / official blog articles: Articles without a Japanese version stay linked in English
These aren’t really “incomplete localization” — they’re modern translation choices using katakana plus staged translation rollouts. Once you’re used to it, the mapping between Japanese and English terms becomes intuitive, and switching back and forth gets cheap.
🎨 UI language and design content are separate things
A common point of confusion is the language of the UI vs. the language of the content inside your designs. They’re fully independent, so it pays to lock that in early.
| Item | Affected by UI language setting? |
|---|---|
| Menus, buttons, tooltips | ✅ Yes (Japanese UI → shown in Japanese) |
| Text content inside text layers | ❌ No (stays exactly as you typed it) |
| Layer / frame names | ❌ No (stays in whatever language you named them) |
| File / project names | ❌ No |
| Comment content | ❌ No (stays in the language the author wrote) |
In other words, switching Figma’s UI to Japanese does not auto-translate text layers that were written in English. To make the design content Japanese, you need a separate flow: pick a Japanese font → edit the text manually.
A separate concern: rendering Japanese text well
When you do use Japanese inside a design, font choice (Noto Sans JP / Hiragino / Yu Gothic, etc.) and tuning of line height / letter spacing make a real difference in quality. For the rendering fidelity of Japanese text moved from XD to Figma (baseline correction, glyph rendering), see the Japanese Text Fidelity Guide.
🔧 Common pitfalls when switching to Japanese UI
I changed the setting but the UI is still in English
Browser cache or the desktop app’s session state can hold on to the previous language. Reload the page (web) or restart the app (desktop) and it should take effect. If it still doesn’t, double-check on the settings page that the language is actually saved as 日本語.
Some parts stay in English
New features, beta features, and third-party integrations are often the slowest to localize. The translation rolls out gradually, so checking back later often shows improvement. If you can’t read a critical action in Japanese, temporarily switching back to English UI to confirm the operation is a practical workaround.
Can’t switch to Japanese on mobile
Mobile apps generally don’t have an in-app language toggle. Set your device’s OS language (iOS / Android) to Japanese, and Figma mobile follows.
Same account across multiple devices
When you change the language in the web app, the desktop app picks it up too (the setting syncs at the account level). Mobile apps follow the OS, so if your devices have different OS languages, the displayed language may differ across them.
Is there a limit on how often I can switch?
You can switch as often as you want from the settings panel. Switching back and forth is also a practical way to learn the mapping between Japanese and English UI terms.
🔌 Plugin localization — separate from Figma itself
Even after you switch Figma’s UI to Japanese, plugin UIs are localized separately by each plugin. Figma’s setting alone doesn’t translate plugin menus or dialogs.
If you rely on plugins heavily, whether key plugins offer a Japanese UI is worth adding to your selection criteria. It matters most for conversion or automation plugins, where reading error messages and confirmation dialogs accurately is part of the job — and where localization presence (or absence) becomes a real productivity difference.
Pixel Fine Converter ships with a Japanese UI
The XD → Figma converter Pixel Fine Converter has supported a Japanese UI since v1.3.0 (May 2026). For users running Figma in Japanese, the plugin keeps the operational context intact: menus, option descriptions, progress messages, and error displays are all localized. Worth a try if you want to keep your XD migration workflow fully in Japanese.
💬 Frequently asked questions
Q: Does switching to Japanese UI cost extra?
A: No. Figma’s language setting is a free feature, available regardless of plan (Free or paid).
Q: Can I follow English tutorial videos with the Japanese UI on?
A: Mostly, yes. Figma’s menu names map directly between English and Japanese in most cases — “File → ファイル”, “Frame → フレーム”, and so on, one-to-one. Switching between the two while you’re learning is fine.
Q: Does my team need to use the same UI language?
A: No. The language setting is per-user, and shared files render in whatever language each user has set. Mixed Japanese / English teams can collaborate on the same files without issue.
Q: Can I switch back to English after going to Japanese?
A: Yes. Switch the language in Settings to English and the UI returns to English. There’s no limit on how often you can switch. If a tutorial or doc is in English, temporarily switching back is a practical move.
Q: Does Figma support languages other than Japanese?
A: Yes — multiple languages. The current list is visible in the language selector inside Settings. Languages are added in updates, so check the official source for the latest.
Q: Will my design’s text content also be auto-translated into Japanese?
A: No. The UI language setting only affects Figma’s interface (menus, etc.). Text layers in your design stay in whatever language you typed. To make the design content Japanese, you need to manually rewrite the text in Japanese.
✅ Wrapping up
Switching Figma’s UI to Japanese is a quick toggle in Settings — easier than most people expect. Switching early, before friction with English UI builds up, is the efficient move.
Article takeaways
- Figma officially supports Japanese UI, switchable from Settings
- What’s localized is the operational UI (menus, panels, dialogs, settings)
- Design content (text and layer names) is unaffected by the UI language
- Translation lag for new features and English community content are realities to roll with
- Plugins are localized separately — picking plugins that ship a Japanese UI keeps the workflow consistent
If you’re moving from XD to Figma and want a Japanese working environment, the cleanest order is: localize Figma’s UI → pick a migration tool → handle Japanese text quality inside designs. Doing it in this order keeps the friction with English UI from compounding while you focus on the migration itself.
Built for users running Figma in Japanese (v1.3.0 onward). Free covers up to 3 artboards.
Related
- Japanese Text Fidelity Guide — Reproducing Japanese text accurately inside Figma (rendering, fonts)
- XD → Figma migration practical guide — Full migration process, with a Japanese environment in mind
- Adobe XD how-to guide — Basic XD operations and Figma migration options for XD users
- Features: Auto Layout conversion — Detailed spec of Pixel Fine Converter’s main features