Is there a spell checker for Figma text layers that doesn't require exporting to Google Docs?

You are cleaning up copy in a Figma file. Fifteen frames, forty text layers, and a deadline. Pasting each string into Google Docs just to catch typos feels absurd, but Figma's own spell checker never seems to catch everything either. So what actually works?

The short answer: Figma's native spell check only ever looks at one text layer at a time, which is why the Google Docs habit exists in the first place. A full project scan requires a plugin that reads every layer directly through Figma's own data, and polishing tone or wording, not just spelling, needs a different tool again. Here is how each piece fits together.

Figma does ship with a spell checker, and it works the way you would expect from a word processor. Double-click into a text layer, and any misspelled word gets a red squiggly underline. Right-click it for suggestions, or press Tab to accept the first one.

Spell check identifies errors with a red squiggly line while you are in text edit mode, and only for the text layer you currently have active (Figma Help Center).

That single word, active, is the catch. Figma checks the layer you are currently typing into. It does not scan a frame, a page, or a file. If you have forty text layers and you are only editing one of them, the other thirty-nine go unchecked, no matter how many typos they contain.

The language settings add a second wrinkle. In the Figma web app, spell check defaults to English (US, CA, UK) and Russian only. Anything else requires installing Figma's font installer so the app can read your system's language settings (Figma Help Center). Without it, Figma disables spell check entirely rather than flag every word in an unsupported language as wrong.

Given those limits, the workaround makes sense. Many designers draft copy in Google Docs first, where a full document gets checked at once, then paste the finished text into Figma. It avoids re-checking each layer by hand.

The trade-off is the extra round trip. You lose Figma's layout context while writing, and every edit after the first paste means switching windows again to re-check it. For a file with dozens of layers, that adds up to a lot of tab switching for something as basic as a spelling pass.

The part of the original question that matters most is "without exporting." Fortunately, Figma's own architecture already solves this, just not through the built-in spell checker.

Figma's Plugin API gives any installed plugin direct, programmatic access to every text node in a file, including its characters property, which holds the actual string of text (Figma Developer Docs). A plugin can walk every text layer on a page, or an entire project, check each string, and report back, all without a single copy or export.

That is exactly how community plugins built for this handle it.

• SPELLL checks English (UK/US) spelling across a whole project, one page, or a single text layer, and adds grammar and white space checks on top (Figma Community).
• CopyDoc's Spell Check Layers feature scans every text layer on the current page, then lets you jump straight to the frame where each mistake lives (Hypermatic Docs).
• TextCheck scans a selected frame or a whole page using LanguageTool, then marks any layer with an error using a visible red stroke (Figma Community).

Any of these closes the actual gap in Figma's native tool: a project-wide sweep, run inside Figma, with no Google Docs detour.

Spelling is only half the job. A string can be spelled perfectly and still read wrong: too formal for an onboarding tooltip, too vague for an error message, or just clunky. That kind of edit is a rewrite, not a spell check, and it is a different category of tool.

This is where WordPolish fits, and it is worth being precise about where it helps and where it does not. WordPolish is a macOS app that reads and edits text through the system's Accessibility API, the same mechanism that lets you select text in any app and have it read by an assistive tool. Specifically, it uses the kAXSelectedTextAttribute to find whatever text is currently highlighted in the focused app (Stack Overflow), after you grant it Accessibility permission once in System Settings (Apple Support).

That mechanism works because Figma's desktop app is built on Electron, the same web-technology framework used by apps like Slack and Discord, as Figma's own engineering team has confirmed (Figma Blog). When you double-click into a text layer to edit it, or type into a comment box, you are typing into a real, focused, editable field, not just pixels on a canvas. That is the same kind of field WordPolish already reads in Slack and Discord, so the workflow carries over directly:

1. Double-click a text layer to enter edit mode, or click into a comment box.
2. Highlight the copy you want to fix.
3. Press the WordPolish shortcut and review the rewrite in the diff overlay.
4. Apply it, or ask for another pass.

The honest limit is scope. This checks and rewrites one selected string at a time, the same scope as Figma's own native spell check. It is not a substitute for a project-wide plugin, and it will not scan forty layers in one pass. What it adds is a second layer of judgment, tone, clarity, and phrasing, on the specific piece of copy you are actively working on.

Put together, here is a way to keep every check inside Figma.

1. Run a plugin like SPELLL, CopyDoc, or TextCheck across the page or project to catch spelling mistakes everywhere at once.
2. As you touch up individual strings, highlight the text inside the layer or comment box and use WordPolish to fix tone, clarity, or awkward phrasing in place.
3. Skip Google Docs. Every step happens inside the file you are already working in.

Google Docs was never really about better spell checking. It was about checking more than one string at a time, something Figma's native tool was never built to do. A plugin closes that gap directly, and a system-wide Mac tool picks up the part spelling checks always miss: whether the words actually sound right.