Running figmaid in the background

figmaid doesn't run in the background by default. You can configure this yourself if you need it.

Docker

Docker has a powerful feature called restart policies, which allows containers to start automatically if they exit or if Docker restarts, as such, running figmaid inside Docker is a great way of keeping figmaid alive. Read more in the dedicated Docker section: figmaid in Docker.

As systemd unit

If you are using Ubuntu, or a similar distro that uses systemd, you can create a unit file for figmaid in just a few minutes.

Prerequisites:

  • You are a sudoer
  • You know the executable path of figmaid (use which figmaid)
  • You know your username
  • Ideally you'd have a basic understanding of what systemd units do. Read more at the official systemd website.

While systemd supports user units, having them reload on reboot is not as straightforward. It would require enabling lingering with loginctl, with the major caveat that every single user service would be started on reboot.

Create the unit file

  1. Below, replace <your username> with the user you installed figmaid to.
  2. If you used the installation script, the executable path is /home/<your username>/.local/bin/figmaid .
  3. Replace <figmaid executable> with the path to figmaid.

The code block is editable, and changes you made will be present if you click the copy button.

Change the User and ExecStart properties as described above.

[Unit]
Description=figmaid — font daemon for figma
Documentation=https://figmaid.pages.dev
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[Service]
User=<your username>

ExecReload=/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID
ExecStart=<figmaid executable>
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=2

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Save the file to /etc/systemd/system/figmaid.service.

Then, to enable, start, and view the status of the service run the below commands:

sudo systemctl enable figmaid
sudo systemctl start figmaid
sudo systemctl status figmaid

View logs

sudo journalctl -eu figmaid

Here -e tells journalctl that we want it to automatically scroll to the end. -u tells that we're asking for an unit.

Update configuration

Currently figmaid doesn't reload the configuration when you reload the service. Instead, you must restart the service.

sudo systemctl restart figmaid

Note that for already configured directories, no restarting is necessary. Instead, you simply have to add the font to the configured directory and reload Figma.