Figma handles superscript through a dropdown called Position, sitting inside the Details tab of the type settings panel. Select a character, pick Superscript, and Figma lifts it above the baseline and shrinks it at the same time. Nothing to install, no plugin needed.
Edit access to the file is the only requirement. Free plan, paid plan, doesn’t matter.
Figma’s faux typography system fills the gap when a font has no real superscript glyph, synthesizing one on the fly. It shipped in March 2022. Community requests for it go back to February 2021, and Figma’s own Community team confirmed the timeline on the Figma Forum.
What Is Superscript in Figma?
Raised characters, smaller than the text around them. That’s the whole effect. Figma treats it as a text property rather than a separate object, which is why it lives in type settings instead of somewhere in the layers panel.
Subscript runs the same machinery in the opposite direction, pushing characters below the baseline.
A few things worth knowing before you go hunting for it:
- There’s no native keyboard shortcut for either property. An open feature request on the Figma Forum from October 2025 confirms it.
- Figma’s synthesized “faux typography” for superscript and subscript went live in March 2022, following community requests that started in February 2021 (Figma Forum)
- The Position control sits inside the Numbers group of the Details tab, available on any Figma team or plan (Figma Help Center)
- Fonts without a true superscript or subscript glyph get a synthesized version, built by shrinking and repositioning the standard character (Figma Help Center)
- You get a live preview in the Type settings panel before committing (Figma Help Center)
All of it happens inside one text layer. Applying superscript never creates a new layer or splits your text into pieces.
Superscript vs Subscript in Figma: What’s the Difference
Same control, opposite directions. One lifts text above the line. The other drops it below.
| Property | Baseline shift | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Superscript | Raised above the line | Trademark marks, exponents, ordinal suffixes |
| Subscript | Lowered below the line | Chemical formulas, footnote markers |
Both live in the Numbers group inside the Details tab, sitting right beside the underline and strikethrough controls.
The font decides whether you get a real glyph or a synthesized one. Nothing else does.
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Check them out →Which is why swapping typefaces, after loading a new font into the project, sometimes fixes a superscript character that looks slightly wrong for reasons you can’t put your finger on.
Where Is the Superscript Option Located in Figma?
Details tab, Type settings panel, under a group Figma labels Numbers. It’s not somewhere you’d stumble across by accident.
The click path from the right sidebar:
- Design panel, right sidebar
- Typography section
- Type settings icon
- Details tab
- Numbers group
- Position dropdown
Mac and Windows behave identically here.
Edit access opens the panel and lets you change the setting. View-only access shows you the property but keeps it locked.
Does Figma Have a Keyboard Shortcut for Superscript?
No keyboard shortcut exists for superscript or subscript. A feature request on the Figma Forum, still open as of October 2025, shows the gap hasn’t been closed.
For the shortcuts Figma does support, its full keyboard shortcuts reference is worth keeping in a tab.
What makes the absence odd is that the neighbours all have shortcuts. Underline gets Cmd+U on Mac and Ctrl+U on Windows. Font weight responds to Option+Command with < or > on Mac. Line height uses Shift+Option with < or >.
Superscript and subscript never got added, so every application routes through the dropdown.
Pasting a trademark or copyright symbol out of a Word document usually strips the formatting on the way in, and you end up reapplying it by hand anyway.
How to Apply Superscript to Text in Figma
Once you know where the Position dropdown is, the process is short.
Start by entering edit mode on the text layer so you can grab the exact characters you want.
- Double-click the text layer to enter edit mode
- Highlight only the character or characters you want raised
- Open the Design panel and click the Type settings icon
- Switch to the Details tab and choose Superscript from the Position dropdown
It applies immediately. No save button, no confirmation.
Deselect the layer and the formatting stays exactly as the preview showed it.
How to Manually Create Superscript Text in Figma
Manual superscript means doing the resizing and repositioning yourself, ignoring the Position dropdown entirely.
Designers reach for this when they need scale control that faux typography won’t give them. It’s slower. Sometimes that’s fine.
Adjusting Font Size
Shrink the selected characters to roughly 60 to 70 percent of the surrounding text.
From a 16px base, that lands somewhere around 10px or 11px and still stays legible.
- Keep the ratio consistent across a design file
- Save it as a text style if you’ll reuse it often
Adjusting Baseline Position
Two routes here, and neither is elegant. You can adjust line height on just the selected characters to shift them relative to the line, or you can drag the resized text upward by eye and check it against a reference glyph.
When the alignment still looks off, undoing the last change and nudging by a smaller increment usually beats starting from scratch.
Native Superscript or Manual Resizing: Which Should You Use?
Reach for the native Position dropdown when you want speed and consistency. Go manual when the scale ratio itself has to be exact.
Neither one is a mistake. They answer different questions.
| Method | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|
| Native Position dropdown | Fast, consistent across a file, applies instantly | Scale ratio is fixed by Figma or the font, not user-adjustable |
| Manual resizing | Full control over size and baseline placement | Slower, inconsistent unless saved as a style |
A support thread from June 2024 documents a user whose Position dropdown vanished from Type settings after an update, with Figma support offering a cache clear among the troubleshooting steps (Figma Forum).
Rare, obviously. But it’s part of why some teams keep the manual method in their back pocket rather than trusting the dropdown to always be there.
Most files never need it. The native control handles trademark symbols, footnotes, exponents and ordinals with zero setup.
When Should You Use Superscript in Figma?
Any time a character belongs above the line without needing to become its own element, this is the tool.
In practice, most projects hit the same handful of situations.
| Use case | Example | Where it shows up |
|---|---|---|
| Trademark and legal marks | TM, SM, R symbols | Logo lockups, legal footers |
| Exponents | Squared or cubed values | Technical diagrams, pricing math |
| Chemical formulas | Raised or lowered numbers in compounds | Education material, pharma packaging |
| Footnotes and ordinals | Reference numbers, 1st, 2nd | Editorial layouts, citations |
Legal footers pull this property more than anything else. A missing trademark mark on a logo lockup is the kind of detail that slips through review and then shows up on printed material.
Editorial layouts use it almost as heavily, usually for footnote markers that need to stay small and stay out of the way.
Does Superscript Work in FigJam and Figma Slides?
Not consistently, no.
Figma Design has the full Position dropdown. The other two surfaces each fail in their own way.
FigJam Text Boxes
FigJam text boxes have no Position property at all.
A February 2026 request on the Figma Forum asks for superscript and subscript to be added to FigJam boards specifically. Still open.
- Paste a Unicode superscript character instead, assuming the font renders one
- Treat FigJam as its own surface rather than expecting it to match Figma Design
Figma Slides Code Blocks
Figma Slides has the reverse problem. Numbers inside a code block get superscripted automatically, whether or not you asked for that.
A May 2026 report on the Figma Forum describes it happening across every coding language the user tested inside the code block element. The thread has no replies or confirmed fix.
Dropping code samples into a Slides deck as screenshots rather than live text sidesteps the whole thing until Figma sorts it out.
Figma Superscript Compared to Word, Google Docs, Illustrator and InDesign
Every layout tool treats superscript as a basic toggle. Where they differ is what happens when the font doesn’t cooperate.
| Tool | Activation method | Shortcut | Missing glyph handling |
|---|---|---|---|
| Figma | Position dropdown, Details tab | None | Synthesizes a faux version automatically |
| Word | Font group button or Font dialog | Ctrl+Shift+Plus | Scales and shifts, no font-glyph check |
| Google Docs | Format menu, Text submenu | Ctrl+Period | Scales and shifts, browser-rendered |
| InDesign, Illustrator | Character panel button, or OpenType Position field | Available in InDesign | Panel button fakes it, OpenType field uses the true glyph if the font has one |
Look at the right column and you’ll see the same split everywhere. There’s a quick button that fakes the appearance, and there’s a font-level feature that does it properly when the typeface supports it. Figma just skipped straight to the fake and made it invisible.
Shortcut details come from Microsoft’s and Google’s help centers. The OpenType fallback behavior is documented in Adobe’s help pages.
Does Figma Export Superscript as an HTML Tag?
Not by itself.
Figma’s file format doesn’t produce HTML. That conversion comes from a plugin or from whatever build process sits downstream.
Emailify, built by Hypermatic, turns a Superscript or Subscript value into a matching sup or sub tag when a design gets exported to HTML for an email build.
Teams doing a manual Figma to HTML export without a plugin write that tag themselves.
The property is readable through Figma’s API too, exposed as an openTypeFeatures value called SUPS since around August 2023, according to a Figma Forum reply from a member of the Figma team.
Read-only, though. A plugin can check whether superscript is applied, but it can’t set it.
When Superscript in Figma Does Not Work
The failures aren’t random. Each one traces back to a specific cause, and each has its own way out.
FigJam Limitation
FigJam boards still lack the Position property covered earlier.
- Paste an actual Unicode superscript character if the font renders one
- Don’t waste time hunting the Details tab, FigJam’s text options don’t include it
Figma Slides Bug
That code block issue has no replies and no confirmed fix as of the May 2026 report.
Static image instead of live text. That’s the only reliable workaround right now.
Pasted Text Losing Formatting
Copy a trademark or footnote character out of Word or a browser and the superscript formatting dies the moment it lands in Figma.
Paste the raw Unicode symbol instead of the formatted character. A Figma Forum user shared this fix for the trademark symbol specifically, and it holds up.
You’d only need to reapply the Position dropdown afterward if the pasted character still looks wrong on its own.
Font-Dependent Alignment Issues
A designer posted on the Figma Forum in 2023 about a brand font that rendered subscript perfectly while turning superscript characters into broken triangle shapes. Same font, same file.
Subscript displayed normally. Superscript came out as a triangle glyph instead of the intended character.
Switching to a font with full superscript glyph coverage clears it up, and falling back to manual resizing works if you’re locked into the brand typeface.
FAQ on How To Superscript In Figma
Can You Apply Superscript to Multiple Characters at Once?
Yes. Highlight several characters, a full word, or an entire line, then choose Superscript from the Position dropdown. The change lands across the whole selection at once. Faux typography rules apply the same way, and there’s no per-character limit.
How Do You Undo or Remove Superscript Formatting in Figma?
Reselect the characters, reopen the Position dropdown in the Details tab, and pick Normal. Ctrl+Z or Cmd+Z right after applying it also works, since Figma logs the change as an ordinary edit.
Is Superscript Available in the Figma Mobile App?
No. Figma’s mobile app doesn’t support editing Figma Design files at all, confirmed by Figma Community Support in January 2024. Viewing, commenting, presenting prototypes, and mirroring frames from desktop are the extent of it, which puts the Position dropdown out of reach.
Does Superscript Formatting Survive a PDF Export From Figma?
Yes. Figma’s PDF export produces a fixed visual layout, so the raised, shrunken characters transfer intact. Figma’s forum does confirm that fonts aren’t embedded in PDF exports, which is a separate limitation affecting font substitution rather than superscript positioning.
Where Does Superscript in Figma Break Down?
The weak points are all at the edges Figma hasn’t finished building. FigJam boards where the property doesn’t exist. Figma Slides code blocks where it fires on its own. And any font missing a true superscript glyph, where the synthesized version renders badly.
Work through these in order and most problems resolve:
- Confirm the loaded font contains a real superscript glyph
- Reopen the Position dropdown and reapply Superscript
- Fall back to manual resizing if the glyph still won’t render
Faux typography shipped in March 2022. The shortcut request from October 2025 is still open. That’s more than three and a half years of visual support without keyboard support, which says something about where this sits on Figma’s priority list.
Italics sit in the same Typography section, and italicizing text in Figma is the natural next control to pick up once superscript stops requiring thought.
