The Canvas in Your Bag: Why the iPad Still Needs a Real Figma Workflow

Whenever I pack light, the iPad Pro goes into my bag first.

On paper, the hardware has been ready for years. Apple silicon runs desktop tasks without breaking a sweat, the OLED panel provides dependable color accuracy and high brightness, and the Apple Pencil magnetically snaps to the frame with virtually zero latency. Combined with a Magic Keyboard, the hardware setup feels like a personal, portable design studio.

Then I sit down at a cafe, order a coffee, open Figma, and that smooth momentum comes to an abrupt halt.

The official app launches fast enough, but a few minutes of use reveals its true purpose: it is built as a viewer. It works fine for reading comments from the couch, clicking through a prototype during a client meeting, or nudging an icon a couple of pixels. The second I need to do actual design work—untangling a nested Auto Layout structure or drafting a new flow from an empty canvas—the interaction falls apart. In the end, the compromise is always the same: I sigh, push the tablet aside, pull the MacBook out of my bag, and get back to work.

After all these years, this quiet compromise on mobile hardware has grown exhausting.

Viewers vs. Makers

A viewer answers one question: What does this look like right now?

Makers live in a different question: What happens if I change this?

When the only reliable path on iPadOS is read-only, teams gradually slide into an inconvenient habit: the iPad becomes the meeting slate, while the laptop remains the only machine for actual output. This split shatters the continuity of doing creative work.

Often, during a commute or out of the office, I spot a spacing inconsistency or an awkward line wrap. On a laptop, I can fix it in thirty seconds. On an iPad, anticipating the frustration of wrestling with mobile browser zooms, I usually just jot a reminder in my notes to fix it back at my desk. By the next morning, that immediate clarity and momentum have already faded.

Carrying high-end silicon and an accurate stylus, only to end up tapping thumbs-up reactions on design critiques, highlights a clear imbalance in the toolchain. Designers do not need a museum to display source files from a distance; we need a dependable bench where we can pick up tools and change things.

Direct on Glass

I do not expect an iPad to replace a Mac for every task. Nobody wants to maintain a multi-thousand-component design system while balancing an eleven-inch screen on their knees. Yet in specific creative moments, direct manipulation on glass feels distinctly better than working with a trackpad.

Anyone who has run a brainstorming session in FigJam or sketched a user flow with an Apple Pencil knows this difference. The stylus touches the pixels directly, eliminating the cognitive distance of pushing a cursor around with a trackpad. Circling edge cases, roughing out wireframes, and connecting ideas directly on the glass keeps thoughts closely linked to the canvas.

The iPad also offers an uncluttered environment that modern desktop operating systems often lack. There are no stacks of overlapping windows, no dock badges demanding attention, and no menu bars crowded with background utilities. The screen belongs entirely to the active file. That focus should be an advantage, not an excuse to step back to a desk.

The Real Obstacles

Anyone who has tried running Figma in an iPad browser knows the real friction lies in a few persistent, practical issues:

• Switching to another app to copy a hex code or check documentation should never cause the browser tab to reload, wiping out your zoom level and viewport position.
• Serious work requires juggling multiple files—the component library, the scratchpad, and the current sprint features need to stay open in pinned tabs, without logins expiring overnight.
• The Pencil should draw and select without triggering accidental page zooms, and two-finger pans should move the canvas rather than triggering browser back-and-forward navigation.
• If a team's brand typography cannot be resolved locally and falls back to system fonts, the layout breaks, making genuine editing impossible.

Figma itself is built on WebAssembly and WebGL; it belongs on the web. It does not strictly require a desktop operating system. It simply requires a browser that treats canvas-based software with proper care.

Built Around Canvas

These frustrations are the reason I built Figgy.

I never intended to rewrite Figma’s vector rendering engine—that would be unnecessary. The real issue is the browser container surrounding the canvas. Figgy is an independent iPad browser built specifically for Figma and FigJam.

Instead of fighting the tablet, Figgy adapts the workspace to how designers actually work. It adds a canvas-level Touchbar directly on screen, putting essential modifier keys like Command, Option, Shift, and Undo right under your thumb so you can work comfortably without clipping on a physical keyboard. With Apple Pencil hover, you can sample colors and inspect layers before committing a stroke.

Rather than overloading the interface, Figgy relies on a short strip of controls that genuinely matter: pinned project tabs that stay where you leave them, whole-page zoom scaling from 0.8 to 1.5 to keep dense sidebars legible, and direct local font loading so your actual typefaces render cleanly on the iPad.

Figgy does not aim to replace the laptop on my desk. Its goal is modest: to reconnect the broken half of the loop on iPad, making it seamless to open a file, sketch an idea, make precise edits, and share the work forward.

The Missing Piece

The tech industry spent years debating whether the iPad qualifies as a “real computer,” arguing over benchmarks, window tiling, and monitor configurations until everyone grew tired of the conversation.

A creative tool should be judged on a simpler premise: when you sit down, wherever you are, can you open it and get your work done without the software getting in your way?

The hardware in your bag has been ready for years. What was missing was the patience to treat the iPad as a serious instrument for making things.

Figgy is my answer to that missing piece—a quiet, focused browser built around the canvas, turning the iPad into the personal studio it was always meant to be.