Figma how-to · Localization QA

How to find text overflow in Figma: 4 methods compared

Overflowing text hides in plain sight: the frame clips it, the layout looks tidy, and nothing on the canvas says “this label is 17px too wide for its button.” Here are four ways to find every broken text layer — from free-and-manual to fully automated — and what each one misses.

Updated July 2026 · 6 min read

Why text overflows in Figma (and why you don’t see it)

Three Figma behaviors conspire to hide overflow:

• • Fixed-size text layers keep their box no matter how long the string gets — the extra text is simply not rendered. Nothing turns red.
• • Frames with “Clip content” cut off anything that crosses the boundary, including text that visually “ends” mid-word only when you look closely.
• • Auto layout set to hug doesn’t overflow at all — it grows. That sounds safe, but the growth pushes siblings around and can silently break the composition instead of the label.

And the worst overflow is the kind that isn’t in your file yet. Your English copy fits today; the German translation lands next quarter and runs 20–35% longer (short labels can double — the numbers per language are in our text-expansion cheat sheet). Finding current overflow is table stakes; finding future overflow is the job.

Method 1 — the visual sweep (free, 5 min per screen)

1. Zoom to 100% (overflow is invisible at fit-to-screen zoom).
2. Walk every text element: buttons, tabs, chips, table cells, card titles.
3. Look for the tells: text touching a container edge, missing descenders, a word that ends suspiciously flush, “…” you didn’t design.
4. Click suspicious text layers and check the layer panel: a fixed-size text box with more content than fits shows its resize handles inside the clipped area.

What it misses: cleanly clipped strings (no visual tell at all), anything you didn’t think to click, and every future translation. Honest capacity: one or two screens. Nobody sweeps a 40-screen file by eye, and nobody re-sweeps it after every copy change.

Method 2 — the stress test (free, catches future overflow)

Instead of hunting existing overflow, provoke it:

1. Duplicate the frame (keep the original untouched).
2. Lengthen every string by your worst-case ratio — +35% is a defensible default; +50–100% for labels under ~15 characters.
3. See what breaks: clipped text, wrapped buttons, exploded table columns.
4. Fix the containers in the original, delete the duplicate.

What it misses: nothing structurally — but the padding is guesswork, editing every string by hand is slow, and you’ll skip layers when the deadline bites. Fine for one critical flow; painful as a routine.

Method 3 — pseudo-localization (free, catches overflow + more)

Pseudo-localization is the stress test with a system behind it: strings become accented, padded and bracketed (“Continue” → “[Çóñţîñúé·····]”), so truncation announces itself — a “[” with no closing “]” on screen means the string got cut, even where the clip was visually clean. It also exposes text baked into images (the only “normal-looking” strings left) and font gaps. Full walkthrough: Pseudo-localization in Figma: a complete guide.

What it misses: done by hand it inherits Method 2’s scaling problem — which is why i18n-mature teams automate it.

Method 4 — automated detection with LocaleProof (free plugin)

LocaleProof runs Methods 2 and 3 for you, then does the part no human does reliably: it measures.

1. Select frames and run the plugin.
2. Simulate — pick languages (de, fi, fr, ja…) for real expansion ratios, or pseudo-localize, with an adjustable buffer.
3. Detect — every text node is compared against its container; overflows are flagged with the exact pixel amount (“+17px”) in a clickable report. Click a row, jump to the layer.
4. Restore — one click brings your original copy back (originals are cached before any change).

It’s free and 100% client-side (networkAccess: none). One honest v1 limit: it flags fixed-size and fill containers (buttons, cards, table cells); hugging auto-layout frames grow instead of overflowing, so give those a quick visual pass for layout shift.

Which method when?

Found overflow — now what?

Every flagged layer needs one of three explicit decisions: wrap to a second line, truncate with a tooltip, or widen the container. “It fits in English” is not a policy — decide once per component, write it into the spec, and the same bug stops recurring in every language. That decision framework (plus 11 more pre-handoff checks) is in our i18n design QA checklist.

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