Adobe XD put on life support ahead of Figma acquisition

Adobe XD put on life support ahead of Figma acquisition

Adobe’s own product design platform may be dropped entirely in favor of Figma. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Days appear to be numbered for Adobe XD. As spotted by developer Alex Ivanovs, the UX / UI product design platform is no longer available as a standalone app under Adobe’s Creative Cloud launcher, effectively sunsetting the software for folks who hadn’t already purchased it.

Considering Adobe is in the process of acquiring Figma, a remarkably similar set of design tools, this news isn’t entirely unexpected. But it doesn’t mean that the Adobe XD app is dead. Not yet anyway.

Anais Gragueb, Senior Manager for Creative Cloud & Innovation Public Relations confirmed to The Verge that Adobe will continue to support Adobe XD for existing customers. If you didn’t purchase an XD subscription before it was pulled then the app will still be available to download through the Creative Cloud All Apps plan. This is a package subscription for over 20 Adobe apps that starts from $54.99 per month (compared to the $9.99 per month for the standalone Adobe XD app), though Adobe XD is not one of the Creative Cloud apps listed on the landing page.

Image: Alex Ivanovs

As Ivanovs highlights here, the entire UI & UX section on the Adobe CC launcher has been removed alongside the standalone Adobe XD app.

It’s unclear when the standalone Adobe XD app was actually removed — back in May, a member of the Adobe Support Community forums highlighted that they were unable to find a download link to install it, and that it had disappeared from the company’s list of Creative Cloud applications. An Adobe representative responded in the forum to clarify that Adobe XD was no longer available.

Adobe hasn’t disclosed any plans to completely shut down the Adobe XD app. It won’t be too surprising if that does happen though — when the company announced it was purchasing Figma back in September last year, one particular question (aside from the various concerns regarding creative market monopolization) came to mind: doesn’t Adobe already have its own app for this?

Figma was Adobe XD’s biggest competitor prior to the acquisition. It’s a more popular service for a myriad of reasons: It’s web-based, has a free-to-use membership tier, and some designers argue that it’s simply a more flexible and powerful tool for prototyping designs. According to one study from UX Tools, Figma was dominating a whopping 77 percent of the UI design market back in 2021 — and its popularity has only grown since that point.

It’s likely that pulling the standalone Adobe XD app from sale is Adobe’s way of discouraging people away from the service before a full closure. After all, once its acquisition of Figma is approved, there’s no reason to keep running two similar applications that directly compete with each other. Whether it does get approval is a matter for regulators, with the EU expected to launch a formal investigation into the matter that could delay — or even unravel — the $80 billion deal.