Figma Tool-Switching Shortcuts

V (or Escape from any other tool) returns you to the default Move/selection tool, which is where you'll spend the overwhelming majority of your time — selecting, dragging, and resizing existing objects rather than drawing new ones. Escape is worth knowing specifically because it works as a universal 'back to selection' key regardless of which tool you were just using, without needing to remember V specifically every time. F activates the Frame tool, Figma's equivalent of an artboard, with a set of preset device-size options (common phone, tablet, and desktop dimensions) available in the right panel the moment you activate it — frames are the fundamental container Figma work is built around, since only a Frame (not a plain Group) supports Auto Layout, clipping, and constraint-based responsive resizing. R and O activate the Rectangle and Ellipse tools respectively, both supporting the same Shift-to-constrain convention (Shift while dragging locks a rectangle to a perfect square, an ellipse to a perfect circle) that's consistent with virtually every other vector or raster design tool covered on this site. P activates the Pen tool for drawing custom vector paths with anchor points and bezier curve handles — Figma's version of the same fundamental tool found in Illustrator, though with a somewhat more simplified handle-editing interaction that trades some of Illustrator's precision for a gentler learning curve, appropriate given Figma's primary use case is interface design rather than detailed illustration work. T activates the Text tool, where a single click creates an auto-width text box that grows to fit whatever you type, while clicking and dragging first creates a fixed-width box that wraps text onto multiple lines within that width — the distinction matters for interface design specifically, since a button label usually wants auto-width behavior while a paragraph of body copy inside a card usually wants a fixed width with wrapping. K activates the Scale tool, which resizes a selection and everything nested within it proportionally, including stroke weights and text sizes — genuinely different from simply dragging a corner resize handle, which can leave strokes and some text properties unscaled unless the object's constraints are specifically configured to handle that. This distinction trips up a lot of newer Figma users who expect a plain resize handle to always scale everything proportionally by default, when it often doesn't without either holding Shift during the drag or using the dedicated K tool instead. C activates the Comment tool for pin-style feedback, letting you click anywhere on the canvas — not just on an object, but any empty space too — to leave a comment anchored to that exact spot, visible to anyone else with access to the file and open for threaded replies, which is how most asynchronous design review happens directly inside Figma rather than through a separate feedback tool. H, or holding the Spacebar temporarily from any other active tool, switches to panning the canvas view. The temporary Spacebar-hold version is worth building into muscle memory specifically because it doesn't require actually switching your selected tool — hold Spacebar, drag to pan, release, and you're instantly back in whatever tool you were using before, without an extra step to switch back.