Adobe alternative to xd: Move Files to Figma

The best adobe alternative to xd for teams preserving existing mobile app work is Figma. Use a conversion route to bring across screens, basic components, and text styling, then budget time to rebuild prototype behavior. Choose Sketch only if your team is Mac-only and already works there. Do not buy a new design tool expecting an Adobe XD file to open perfectly with every interaction intact.

The short version

Our pick: Figma

Best for: Mobile product teams moving old Adobe XD screen libraries into a shared, browser-based design workflow.

Skip it if: Do not choose Figma solely to preserve a complex XD prototype unchanged; its interaction model must be rebuilt, not rescued by import.

Key takeaways

• •Adobe XD is discontinued, so an old XD file is an archive to migrate rather than a foundation for future design work.
• •Figma does not natively open .xd files; you need a converter or an intermediate export route, and results need inspection.
• •Screen frames, ordinary layers, basic reusable elements, and text styling are the most realistic assets to retain.
• •Auto-animate behavior, voice triggers, plugin-dependent content, and some complex interactions need manual replacement.
• •For a 25–40-screen mobile app with several key flows, allow roughly 12–30 hours to rebuild and test prototype links after visual migration.
• •If the imported file is structurally messy or the product has changed, regenerating current screens from a written app brief can beat repairing legacy design debt.

What's on this page

• •Adobe XD is discontinued: treat every old file as a migration project
• •There is no native one-click Adobe XD to Figma migration
• •What usually survives: frames, layers, basic components, and text styles
• •What does not transfer cleanly: animation, voice, plugins, and interaction logic
• •Budget 12–30 hours to rebuild a mid-size mobile prototype, not zero
• •Figma versus Sketch: choose the destination based on the team that edits the file
• •When a clean rebuild beats repairing the converted file
• •A migration plan that keeps the release moving

Adobe XD is discontinued: treat every old file as a migration project

Adobe XD is discontinued. Adobe stopped selling it as a standalone product and ended active feature development, leaving teams with existing access, local files, shared links, and a difficult planning question: what happens the next time the app changes?

The important date for a product team is not the day you first heard the news. It is the next release where a designer needs to add a payment state, update Android navigation, hand off a new empty state, or bring a contractor into the file. A tool in maintenance mode becomes expensive at that point. You are paying in workarounds, limited hiring options, and a growing gap between the file and the team’s actual workflow.

Do not start by converting every historic exploration. Audit the file first. For each XD project, record:

• •the current production screen set;
• •the design-system source of truth, if one exists;
• •flows used in usability tests or stakeholder demos;
• •assets and copy that still match the shipped product; and
• •screens that are only historical reference.

Most teams discover that a 90-screen XD file contains 30–45 screens worth carrying forward. That distinction changes the migration cost more than the converter you choose.

Figma is the recommended destination for most teams because it is widely used for collaborative product design and supports the shared-file workflow that tends to replace XD. Sketch remains a credible option for a Mac-only design team, but it is not the better default for a mixed product, engineering, and research group. The objective is not to make the new file resemble XD. It is to establish a maintained source of truth for iOS and Android screens.

There is no native one-click Adobe XD to Figma migration

Start with the constraint that causes most bad estimates: Figma does not natively open an .xd file as an editable Figma design file. An Adobe XD to Figma migration therefore uses a third-party converter, an export-and-import route, or manual rebuilding of selected screens. Each route can produce a usable starting point. None is a faithful replay of the XD document model.

That matters because an imported canvas can look correct at 100% zoom while being painful to edit on day three. A button may arrive as four unrelated rectangles and labels. A repeated card may look like a component but have no usable variants. A style may be visually close but not connected to a Figma library. Your migration acceptance test must go beyond appearance.

Run a pilot on five representative screens before converting the whole project:

1. •a dense list or dashboard;
2. •a form with errors and keyboard-related states;
3. •a screen with reused cards or controls;
4. •an iOS or Android navigation pattern; and
5. •a screen from a key prototype flow.

Check layer names, text editability, image fills, masks, component instances, and whether designers can make one reasonable change without breaking three screens. If the pilot is untidy, importing another 70 artboards only multiplies cleanup work.

Keep the original XD file read-only after the pilot. Do not allow parallel edits in both tools during the move. Teams lose more time reconciling two “latest” versions than they do rebuilding a missing interaction. Pick a cutoff date, migrate the active release branch, and label the XD file as archive material.

What usually survives: frames, layers, basic components, and text styles

A good conversion route is most useful for transferring the visual inventory of a mobile app. Expect the following to survive often enough to plan around, but validate the result on your own file:

• •Artboards and screen geometry. XD artboards generally become Figma frames or comparable top-level containers. This gives you a screen map quickly, including iPhone and Android screen sizes.
• •Ordinary visual layers. Text, shapes, images, icons, fills, borders, and simple masks commonly make the trip in editable or near-editable form.
• •Basic reusable elements. Simple XD components can convert into Figma components, or at least arrive as repeated groups that are easy to turn into components.
• •Text styles. Font choices, sizes, weights, alignment, and basic paragraph treatment are usually recoverable as text formatting. Whether they arrive as well-organized Figma styles is converter-dependent.

“Survives” does not mean “production-ready.” A mobile file with 36 screens may import as 36 visually recognizable frames, then need a designer to rebuild the button, field, tab bar, and card system properly. That is still faster than redrawing every screen, especially where the product is stable.

Do a component pass before polishing individual screens. Create a small Figma library for repeated mobile UI: primary and secondary buttons, text fields, navigation bars, list rows, badges, dialogs, and loading states. Then swap imported copies for instances where sensible. If you clean each screen separately, changes to a 16-pixel padding or an error color will become a 36-screen hunt.

Also check platform conventions rather than blindly preserving them. An XD file can contain years of inherited choices: old iOS bars beside Material patterns, inconsistent safe-area handling, and icons converted to outlines. Migration is a useful point to correct those issues.

What does not transfer cleanly: animation, voice, plugins, and interaction logic

Prototype behavior is the part of an XD file most likely to disappoint after conversion. The screen images may migrate; the logic connecting them does not have a universal equivalent.

Auto-animate transitions need special attention. Adobe XD could infer animated changes between matching objects. Figma has its own animation and transition settings, but it does not receive XD’s intent as a reliable, finished interaction. You will need to reconnect frames, choose transitions, and check that layer naming and structure support the effect you want.

Voice prototyping should be treated as a rebuild. If your XD demo used voice triggers, do not assume a converter can map them into a Figma prototype. Write down the spoken phrase, target screen, fallback behavior, and what you were testing. In many cases, a recorded walkthrough or a focused prototype is a better replacement than trying to recreate every experimental trigger.

Plugins and plugin-generated objects are another break point. A plugin may have inserted data, icons, charts, maps, or content that exists only as a flattened result or depends on Adobe XD-specific behavior. The visual result can sometimes come across, but the plugin connection itself does not. Recreate the content using the destination tool’s own workflow, or use real sample data for the screens that matter.

Complex overlays, timed transitions, scroll areas, keyboard behavior, and nested component states also require testing. Build a migration checklist around user actions, not features. For example: open account, filter transactions, view a transaction, dispute it, submit evidence, see confirmation. If that five-step path works on a phone-sized prototype, it is useful. If the prototype has ten preserved links but fails at the key decision, it is not.

Budget 12–30 hours to rebuild a mid-size mobile prototype, not zero

For a mid-size mobile app file—roughly 25–40 current screens, five to eight important user flows, and standard taps, overlays, and form states—budget 12–30 hours to rebuild and test prototype flows after the screens have been visually migrated. That is a planning range, not a vendor benchmark. Your result depends on screen cleanliness, the number of states, and how much behavior was embedded in the XD prototype.

The low end fits a file with clear screen naming and a short demo path: onboarding, sign-in, home, detail, confirmation. A designer can reconnect 30–50 links, add a few overlays, and test the main routes in a couple of focused days.

The high end arrives quickly when the project includes conditional-looking branches, filters, checkout or application forms, animated transitions, scrollable overlays, variants that were manually faked, or several device sizes. A prototype with 40 screens can contain 100 or more connections once back buttons, errors, cancellation, and success paths are counted.

Estimate in three passes:

1. •Inventory: count current screens, overlays, component states, and links in the flows people actually use.
2. •Rewire: rebuild the paths that support usability tests, sales demos, or development handoff.
3. •QA: run each path on a realistic phone frame, test dead ends, and check return navigation.

Do not include every abandoned concept in the estimate. Preserve it as an XD archive or a static Figma page. Rebuilding historical prototype links is usually false economy.

If one designer owns the migration, reserve review time with product and engineering. The fastest way to waste 20 hours is to recreate behavior that no longer matches the app being built.

Figma versus Sketch: choose the destination based on the team that edits the file

Figma wins this migration for most Adobe XD teams because the migration usually coincides with a collaboration change. Product managers, researchers, developers, and external reviewers can inspect the same shared file without making a Mac desktop application the center of the process. That operational benefit matters after the import, when the first release requires comments, updated specs, and component fixes.

Sketch is the better choice only for a team that is firmly Mac-based, already has a working Sketch process, and prefers it enough to accept a separate migration path. It is not a shortcut for opening XD files intact. You still need to assess conversion quality, rebuild interactions, and recreate any system-level organization that does not translate.

Neither destination makes Adobe XD prototype logic magically portable. Choose the long-term editor first, then use the conversion route that gives the cleanest editable layers. Avoid deciding based on a single hero screen. Import the difficult screens: the variable-height list, the checkout form, the modal stack, and the screen with the most reused controls.

For an XD alternative for mobile app design, do not judge only by canvas tools. Ask who will make the next 20 changes. If engineers need inspectable screen specifications and designers need shared components across iOS and Android, Figma is the practical default. If one experienced Mac design team is the only editor group and Sketch is already its standard, Sketch can be a sensible home. For everyone else, a fresh Figma file built from the useful parts of XD creates less long-term friction than attempting to preserve every old convention.

When a clean rebuild beats repairing the converted file

Conversion is the right answer when the screen inventory is still accurate and the visual system is mostly sound. It is the wrong answer when your team spends the first day fixing detached layers, stale copy, duplicate components, and navigation paths for features that have already changed.

Use a rebuild threshold. If more than about a third of the active screens need substantive product changes, or if the import cannot produce editable core controls after a short pilot, stop treating the XD file as source material. Use it as reference and rebuild the current product deliberately.

This is where a plain-English screen brief can be faster than manual repair. Write the app’s current job, target platform, key screens, inputs, output states, and visual constraints. For example: “An iOS expense app with a transaction feed, transaction detail, dispute form, document upload, review state, and confirmation. Use a compact financial UI, support error and empty states, and include Android equivalents.” That brief describes the product you are shipping, not the historical structure of an XD document.

floow.design is useful at this point because it generates iOS and Android mobile app screens from a plain-English description, lets you refine them by chat, and can export to Figma or code formats including Flutter, React Native, SwiftUI, and Jetpack Compose. It is not an XD importer, a vector illustration tool, or a replacement for complex prototype logic. Use it to regenerate changed screens and establish a clean current design direction.

If your remaining work is reconnecting a few known flows, rebuild them in Figma. If the work is deciphering 2019 layers to recover screens that product has already replaced, describe the app again and generate a cleaner starting set. That is often the cheaper decision.

A migration plan that keeps the release moving

Run the move as a short production project, not an open-ended cleanup effort. A practical sequence is:

1. •Freeze the active XD branch. Name the final source file and export a reference PDF or image set for comparison.
2. •Pilot the conversion. Use the five-screen test set and document what survives, what becomes flattened, and what needs reconstruction.
3. •Set up Figma foundations. Create pages for foundations, components, active flows, archive screens, and handoff. Define color, type, spacing, and platform conventions before broad screen cleanup.
4. •Migrate current screens only. Bring over the release scope, then add older screens only when a real decision requires them.
5. •Rebuild components first. Replace repeated imported groups with a manageable library before screen-by-screen refinement.
6. •Rewire priority flows. Start with the flows needed for testing, stakeholder review, or engineering decisions. Add edge cases after the core route works.
7. •Run visual and behavioral QA. Compare each active screen to the XD reference and tap every important route in the new prototype.
8. •Retire XD deliberately. Keep a read-only archive, transfer ownership of the Figma library, and tell the team where new work belongs.

The failure mode is keeping XD alive “just in case.” That creates split comments, duplicated changes, and confusion over which prototype represents the release. Give the archive a purpose: historical reference only.

Budget separately for visual migration and interaction rebuild. A file can be visually moved in hours yet still need days of prototype work. Once you state that distinction up front, stakeholders can choose rationally: preserve only the flows they need, rebuild a cleaner prototype, or regenerate changed screens from a current written brief.

Adobe XD migration destinations for mobile app teams

What it costs

Adobe XD is discontinued, so do not plan a new workflow around buying additional XD seats. Figma offers a free entry tier, paid editor-oriented tiers, and enterprise-oriented options; features and published prices change, so check Figma’s own pricing page before budgeting. Sketch uses its own licensing and subscription structure, with current terms published by Sketch. floow.design is paid beyond its trial; check its current plans for generation and export access. Compare the cost of subscriptions with the one-time labor to clean components and rebuild prototype flows, because that labor is usually the larger migration expense.

Mistakes that cost you the most

Converting the entire XD archive before proving the route on difficult screens.

Pilot five representative mobile screens and inspect editability, reusable elements, text, images, and a key flow before committing.

Calling an imported screen set a completed prototype migration.

Separate visual conversion from interaction rebuild, then estimate and test each priority user path.

Preserving every old component exactly as it arrived.

Rebuild the small set of controls that recur across active screens, then replace imported duplicates with maintainable instances.

Letting people edit XD and Figma at the same time.

Set a migration cutoff, make XD read-only after it, and designate the new Figma file as the only active source of truth.

Frequently asked questions

Is Adobe XD being discontinued?

Yes. Adobe XD is discontinued: Adobe ended active development and stopped selling it as a standalone product. Existing files may still matter to your team, but XD should be treated as an archive and migration source rather than a tool to build a new mobile app design workflow around. Move active screens, components, and required demo flows to a maintained destination.

Can I open Adobe XD files in Figma?

Figma does not natively open an Adobe XD .xd file as an editable Figma file. To move an XD project, you need a third-party conversion route, an intermediate export, or manual reconstruction. Converted results can retain screens, ordinary layers, basic components, and text formatting, but you should test a representative sample before converting the full project.

What happens to my Adobe XD prototypes when I migrate?

Adobe XD prototype links and interactions should be assumed to need rebuilding in Figma. Screen visuals may transfer through a converter, but auto-animate intent, voice prototyping, plugin-dependent behavior, overlays, and complex interaction paths do not reliably become a finished Figma prototype. For a 25–40-screen mobile app with several core flows, budget roughly 12–30 hours to rewire and test priority routes.

Is there a free way to convert XD files to Figma?

Some conversion methods may offer limited free use, but Figma has no native free XD-file importer. A free conversion result is only useful if the output remains editable: test frames, text, images, masks, reusable controls, and a difficult mobile screen before relying on it. If the converted file needs extensive cleanup, rebuilding the current screens may cost less than repairing a nominally free import.

Should I move from Adobe XD to Figma or Sketch?

Choose Figma for most Adobe XD migrations, especially if designers, product managers, researchers, and engineers need to review one shared mobile app file. Choose Sketch only when your editors are Mac-only and Sketch is already the team’s established standard. Neither option preserves Adobe XD prototype behavior perfectly, so the decision should be based on the workflow you want after migration.

Where this leaves you

Move active Adobe XD work to Figma, not because conversion is perfect, but because it gives most mobile product teams a workable long-term home. Carry over the screen inventory, rebuild the component system, and reserve 12–30 hours for a mid-size prototype’s important flows. If the import exposes an outdated product rather than a useful design system, stop repairing history: describe the current app in plain English, regenerate the screens with floow.design, and export a clean starting point to Figma.

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Design the screens before you commit to a tool

Readers rebuilding broken prototype flows manually realize it's faster to redescribe the app screens in plain English and regenerate them than to repair the import.

If that is roughly your situation: describe the app in plain English and floow.design draws the iOS and Android screens, takes your changes by chat, and exports the result to Figma or to Flutter, React Native, SwiftUI and Jetpack Compose.

Design your app screens now →

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