Fill, Hug, or Fix?” — Cracking the Figma Auto Layout Mystery🤔

While practicing and reading to understand Auto Layout better, I finally wrapped my head around the difference between Fill Container, Hug Contents, and Fixed Size in Figma. 🧩

This simple checklist helped me see when to use what — especially when designing responsive elements like buttons, cards, or tags.

Summary in brief

📐 1. Fill Container

Elements set to Fill Container stretch to occupy available space in their parent frame:

• If the parent is horizontal, items expand to share its width.

• If vertical, items extend to match its height.

• Useful when you want responsiveness—like buttons or cards stretching to fit.

  
  

🧩 2. Hug Contents

With Hug Contents, the frame shrinks or grows to fit exactly around its inner elements:

• Width adapts to the widest content, height to the tallest.

• Ideal for dynamic components like text labels or tags, where size depends on content.

  
  

📏 3. Fixed Size

A Fixed constraint fixes the element to a specific width and/or height:

• It won’t stretch or shrink, regardless of parent container adjustments.

• Best suited for icons, spacers, or UI elements that must maintain exact size.

  
  

  

Why It Matters

Auto-layout systems (like Figma’s) use these settings to help you build adaptive, maintainable layouts:

• Fill Container: Stretch to fill space—great for flexible designs.

• Hug Contents: Fit tightly—good for content-driven sizing.

• Fixed Size: Stay constant—perfect for consistent UI elements.

Flexibility, neatness, and adaptability are vital in responsive UI design, and these behaviors let designers control how components behave when layouts change.

🎥 Want to See It in Action?

If you're someone who learns better by watching, I highly recommend this video that helped me understand it clearly: (Click the link)👉 Watch on YouTube – “Fill Container vs Hug Contents vs Fixed Size in Figma” (by Michael from UX Tips)

It visually explains how each setting works in real design situations — a must-watch if you’re practicing auto layout in Figma!

✅ Conclusion

Understanding auto layout concepts like Fill, Hug, and Fixed is a key step — but what really makes the difference is practice.The more you experiment with these settings in your own projects, the more natural they’ll feel.

Keep exploring, keep designing — because only practice makes it perfect. 🎨💻