Smart Selection & Tidy up in Figma

Hi everyone, in this video we're going to look at something called Tidy up, super awesome, grab stuff that are not kind of tidy, watch this, oh, look how tidy. Gets better because you're like, actually, I need this guy over here, and look, they swap, oh ho, it gets better. I've got some cards, I need to select them all, tidy you guys up, but also, you know what I need, I need another one of these. Click on it, 'Command D', 'Ctrl D', there's another one, I need another one, ah, so good. All right, I'll get a little excited, in this one, you're going to enjoy it, let's jump in and look at something called Tidy up and Smart Selection. 

All right, let's start with Tidy up, if you select a few things, you might notice that, this little line has been appearing, what does it do? Let's click it, give it a click, it tidies it up, that's what it's called, Tidy up. If I undo it, tidy up won't appear, if you've only got like two things selected, it needs three to kind of do the spacing between them, and also it won't appear if you're already really clever, and you've got great spacing. 

So if I got all these guys, 7 apart, it doesn't appear, because it's like, I don't need to tidy this up. Works as well if I've got, let's say this, this, three stripey lines, change into a grid, when there's kind of a grid, there's more than one row of stuff, or more than two columns, let's click it, and it kind of lines everything up. 

Now it's not like trying to make a complete grid, it just kind of puts this row's even spacing, same with that one, you can see, this is a little bit off, it's not exactly how I thought it would work, but great for kind of doing individual rows. There is a long way, if I select on this, up here, Tidy up, the icon should appear, if it's greater over here, one of those two rules, that I mentioned a second ago are broken. They're already evenly spaced, well, you've only got two things selected, so forget tidy it up now. 

We've got to a point where Smart Selection, this is the favorite, my favorite part of all of Figma. So it doesn't matter if you use Tidy up, or you've just spaced them nicely, or you've used the kind of like, Distribute Horizontal Spacing, as long as they're evenly spaced, you'll get these pink lines and these pink dots. What's good about them, the spaces here in between, watch this, click, drag, whoa! 

So you've got a lot of control over a big group of things, horizontally or vertically. So I've got these, they're different shapes, I do rectangles in different shapes, anyway, let's get the spacing right on them, and maybe we'll even center them up, just because, and maybe we'll even kind of like align them on one side. 

So it doesn't matter, horizontally, vertically, we can drag these, or we can type it in here, say using 16 as your spacing, like awesome, let's go down to 8. They don't have to be exactly the same shape, clearly, I haven't done that, but that's not even the best bit, you're like, is there better bits? There is better bits, these pink dots are the better bits, watch this, if I click on him once, I'll click on the green one, I'm like, "What am I going to do with you?" I need you to be over here, so watch this, click, hold, and drag, look, he moves wherever I want him to go, so good. 

Imagine this with cards, and lists, and icons, we're doing it with rectangles just to go fast, and get the idea. It gets even better, you're like, "No way," yes, way, watch this. Let's say that I have got these, they're all evenly spaced, because all that stuff appears, called Smart Selection, be like, actually, I need another one of these, click it, and hit 'Command D', this makes another one, you're like, "What if I need another kind of yellow one here?" 'Command D', 'Ctrl D' on a PC, and it just adds another one. 

Imagine your big list of things and cards, and, lists and cards, I can't think of anything else. You can just 'Command D' or 'Ctrl D' them and it will make a new one, and kind of separate everything else out. So Tidy up, kind of separate, but they get lumped together, it's just a way of kind of tidying them up. It doesn't really matter whether you use Tidy up, or Horizontal, Vertical Spacing, as long as they're evenly spaced these things appear, with them out, you can see, they're not there. 

Let's do a couple of other, like real life examples, and things that might catch you out, is I've got this icon, this one, and this one, this one here, if I do smart lining up, it's kind of worked, it actually worked okay for mine, it's when you have, let's say we add a circle to our chimney, that's my smoke coming out of it, because these guys are not grouped, and then I go to tidy up, it kind of does weird stuff. 

So if you are having problems, and your icon's made of a couple of parts, just make sure it is either kind of a Boolean, like we learned, or it's a group, or it's a frame, just something to tie it together. These are all tied together, and this one here, are three lines, I'm going to turn it into a frame, I'm going to call this one "Mobile Nav", and now I can use the smart, kind of spacing out, and then I get these. You can imagine, like, especially if you're doing like the kind of testing for, the touch area, and I'm like, actually, I want to move this around, oh. Now you're seeing, you're like, "Yeah, now I get it", good as me. I get really excited by that one, so good. 

Next thing I'm going to do is, I'll show you, it's just good for Type as well, for like menus, I'm going to type in "Home", and instead of doing them in one text box, I'm going to go, you, actually, I'll do three of them, four of them, so duplicate, duplicate, let's have a look, so Home, I'll speed this up. I'm just going to pretend there's more, that's the only one I've got for my Nav, but-- say you got a bunch of lines, they're all in separate little text boxes, and you're like, "Oh, tidy them up." 

Actually, once they're tidied, can I change the spacing? You can, and then can I click one of them, select them all. The pink dots, and these are quite small, there they are, hello, and then you can move them around. Add more of them, click one, 'Command D' or 'Ctrl D', oh, so nice, order for something more complicated real quick. 

All right, I'll bring you back real quick for another little bonus tip, can you see me naming those, probably didn't, was pretty fast, but I find, like a-- name the first one, let's change it to "A", I select it all, I copy, and I can hit 'Tab' on my keyboard to get down to the next one, 'Tab' again, so you don't have to like double click with your mouse, go in, 'Paste', I don't know, is that helpful, anyway. 

So I've created these, they need to be groups, like our icons, kind of combine them. I've turned them into frames, because frames are awesome, but if I select all of these, I thought they were close, you can see, their spacing is close, but it's not, click on this, oh, perfect. Now I get these, like great, and if I decide, actually, they're all recycled, but wait there. So they're all in frames, I kind of made them different, so I can select them all, they've all been spaced nicely, and I can say, actually, I need another one of, what do I need? I need another one of this one. 

So 'Command D', 'Ctrl D', probably need to have them all selected, you, 'Command D', and I could say, actually, you go there, look at that, cool. What it does do, it does push off the frame, you can see the outside frame, one of the quirks. There's probably a way of fixing that, I can't figure it out, what is the size of my page, the width of this, is a width of 375. So I'm going to say, you go back to 375 for me, thank you. 

All right, there'll be no problem if yours, like my design, pushes out to the outside of the frame, so it kind of freaks out a little bit, I don't know, what do you think? Let me know in the comments, is this your favorite thing, what is your favorite thing so far? Let me know in the comments below, I just, I'm going to check back, I'm going to see, this is like as good as it gets, or is there other things that you're like, "Sorry, Dan", this other thing, the flaming, the flaming house. 

All right, so that is Tidy up, which is nice and simple, and then, Smart Selection, which is a little bit, not complicated, but they have to be evenly spaced first, and probably grouped, or stuck in a frame or a component, which we'll do in a bit. All right, I hope you enjoyed it, I will see you in the next video.