Token Types
Opacity

Opacity Token

The Opacity Token allows you to capture the transparency of a layer as a Design Token.

Design decisions defined by Opacity Tokens

Opacity Tokens define a layer's opacity. In Figma, they can be applied to any design element that supports reduced opacity.

For example, you might have a Button that changes opacity when hovered over.

  • You could create two Opacity tokens:
    • button.opacity.default with a value of 1 (fully opaque)
    • button.opacity.hover with a value of 0.8 (slightly transparent)
  • Then, apply the Opacity Tokens to the background container layer of each variation of the Button design.

Possible Values

An Opacity Token can define any level of transparency from fully opaque to fully transparent. The values range from:

  • 1 (layer is fully opaque)
  • 0 (layer is fully transparent)
  • Any decimal value between 0 and 1 can be used to set varying levels of transparency.

Values that reference another Token

When trying to reference another Token as the Value for an Opacity Token, you will see

  • Tokens living in Token Sets that are currently active.
    • In the left menu on the plugin's Tokens page, a checkmark is visible next to the Token Set name.
  • Token Type is compatible:
    • The same = opacity

However, like all token types, you can "force" a reference by manually entering the token name between curly brackets.

✦

The value will show a broken reference until the originating token set is marked as enabled.

→ Jump to the Token Values with References guide for more details

W3C DTCG Token Format

Opacity is not yet an official token type in the W3C DTCG specifications, but there is mention of a Percentage/radio type under consideration (8.8 Additional Types)

Transforming Tokens

Engineers typically transform Tokens used in code with Style Dictionary, which is tool-agnostic. Tokens coming from Tokens Studio require an additional step: @Tokens-studio/sd-transforms, an npm package that prepares Tokens for Style Dictionary.

When transforming Opacity Tokens, there are specific configurations to be aware of.

For Opacity Token values entered in percentages, the SD-transforms package converts the value from % to number between 0 and 1 -> ts/opacity.

→ SD-Transforms Read-Me Doc, ts/opacity

Resources

Mentioned in this doc:

Figma resources:

CSS resources:

Community resources:

  • None yet!

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Known issues and bugs

Tokens Studio Plugin GitHub - Open issues for Token Type Opacity

  • Opacity issue: some values are wrongly rounded in Figma #2380
    • Values entered less than 1% are resolving to 1% in Figma
    • Ex: 0.1% will resolve to 1%
  • Referencing a (base+opacity) and adding another opacity to that, doesn't give the correct result #1822
    • Including an Opacity Token in the value of a Color Token produces unexpected results.
    • We may want to avoid using Opacity Tokens in Color Token values as Figma assigns the Opacity value to layer transparency and not a color modifier.
  • Using Opacity in Tokens Creates Blank Variable #2977
    • When Exporting Color Tokens with Opacity Tokens referenced in the value as Color Variables, the Variable is not created as expected.
    • Likely related to issue 1822 above.

🐞 If you are experiencing an issue not listed here, please reach out to us on the Troubleshooting channel of our community Slack, or submit it on our feedback tool.

Requests, roadmap and changelog

  • None

💌 Visit https://feedback.tokens.studio/ to contribute or subscribe to updates.

Last updated on September 9, 2024
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