Figma Vector Eraser Tool: The Complete 2026 Guide

The Figma vector eraser tool lets you erase and reshape vector paths directly on the canvas, then recolor multiple regions at once with a drag-to-fill paint bucket, all without leaving Draw mode or switching to another app. Figma shipped both tools together in August 2026 as part of a broader push to make hand-drawn, precise vector edits feel as direct as working with a real pen and eraser. Here’s exactly how they work, where to find them, and how they compare to Illustrator and Photoshop.

What Is the Figma Vector Eraser Tool?

It’s a dedicated eraser built into Figma’s vector edit mode and Draw mode that removes parts of a vector path by dragging over it, the same way you’d erase pencil marks on paper. Before this update, cleaning up a messy vector shape in Figma meant manually selecting anchor points and deleting them one at a time, or booting up Illustrator just to trim a path. According to Figma’s official announcement, the tool is designed to keep designers “in flow” by making erasing and recoloring feel like direct, hands-on canvas edits rather than a detour through menus.

It ships alongside a matching recolor tool, effectively a paint bucket for vectors, so the two are meant to be used together: erase what you don’t want, then recolor what’s left, without ever leaving the canvas. For anyone who has ever exported a half-finished icon out of Figma just to fix one messy edge in another app, this is the update that removes that step entirely.

How Does the Figma Vector Eraser Tool Work?

Select a vector layer, enter vector edit mode, then switch to the eraser and drag across any part of the path you want removed. Figma recalculates the surrounding anchor points automatically, so you don’t have to manually clean up stray nodes after erasing, the way you would with a manual point-deletion workflow. The eraser respects the shape of your stroke, so a quick, narrow drag removes a thin sliver while a slower, deliberate pass clears a wider area.

The tool works on both closed shapes and open paths, which matters for illustrators who build up artwork from overlapping strokes rather than single filled regions. You can erase across multiple overlapping vector objects in one pass if they’re grouped, which saves a step compared to erasing each shape individually.

Where Do I Find the Figma Vector Eraser Tool?

Select a vector shape, then enter vector edit mode (press Enter with the shape selected, or double-click it) or switch to Draw mode from the toolbar. From either mode, press Shift+E to switch to the eraser. The same shortcut also toggles the recolor tool depending on your last-used tool state, so check the toolbar icon if you’re not sure which one is active before you start dragging.

If you already use Shift+E for something else, note that Figma kept the existing Shift+E shortcut for the Prototype tab in Design mode unchanged, according to Figma’s release notes, so the new eraser shortcut only applies inside vector edit mode and Draw mode, not across the whole app.

How Do You Recolor Multiple Regions at Once?

Pick a solid color or gradient from the fill panel, switch to the recolor tool, then drag across any regions you want filled. Unlike the standard fill property, which applies to one selected layer at a time, the drag-to-fill recolor tool lets you paint across several separate shapes or path regions in a single continuous motion, similar to a bucket fill tool in a raster editor like Photoshop.

This is especially useful for line art and icon sets, where a single illustration might be built from dozens of small closed regions that would otherwise need individual fill colors applied one by one. Recoloring several regions in one drag turns a tedious, repetitive task into a single gesture.

What Keyboard Shortcuts Does the Tool Use?

• Enter — enter vector edit mode on a selected shape
• Shift+E — switch to the eraser tool in vector edit mode or Draw mode
• Escape — exit vector edit mode back to the regular selection tool
• Click-drag with the recolor tool active — fill or recolor multiple regions in one pass

These shortcuts are scoped to vector editing contexts, so they won’t conflict with shortcuts you already use elsewhere in Figma, like commenting, frame selection, or prototyping, unless you’re actively inside a vector layer’s edit mode.

How Does This Fit Into Figma’s 2026 Product Direction?

Figma has spent 2026 pushing further into full product creation rather than staying a pure interface design tool. Recent releases have added a detachable AI agent chat panel in the desktop app, nested folder organization for large projects, and now more direct, hand-drawn-feeling editing tools like this eraser and recolor pair. The through-line across all of it is fewer trips outside Figma to finish a piece of work.

That direction matters for teams choosing a design stack. A designer who used to bounce between Figma for layout, Illustrator for vector cleanup, and a separate app for quick recoloring can now do all three in one canvas, which shortens handoff time between design and development and cuts down on version-mismatch bugs from re-imported assets.

What Common Mistakes Should You Avoid With the Eraser Tool?

Erasing on a locked or component-instance layer is the most common early mistake. Figma won’t let you edit an instance’s underlying path directly, so if the eraser doesn’t seem to do anything, check whether you’re editing a component instance rather than the original vector layer, and detach or edit the main component instead.

Dragging too fast across dense, overlapping paths can also erase more than intended, since the tool follows your cursor’s exact motion rather than snapping to individual shape boundaries. Slow, short strokes give you more control on detailed illustrations than one fast sweep across the whole canvas.

Forgetting to exit vector edit mode before selecting a different layer is another frequent snag. Press Escape first, otherwise a click meant to select a new shape can instead erase or recolor part of the shape you were just editing.

How Does Canva Compare for Quick Vector Cleanup?

Canva’s editing tools are built around templates and drag-and-drop assets rather than raw path-level vector editing, so there’s no direct equivalent to Figma’s eraser for reshaping a custom vector path point by point. Canva users typically swap out a whole graphic element rather than editing its underlying anchor points, which is faster for template-based work but offers far less control over a custom illustration.

If your workflow already leans on Canva’s AI editing suite for quick social or marketing graphics, our Canva Magic Studio guide covers those tools in depth. For anything that needs precise, custom vector shapes, Figma’s new eraser and recolor tools are the better fit of the two.

Figma Vector Eraser Tool vs Illustrator and Photoshop Eraser: How Do They Compare?

Figma’s eraser targets vector paths on a collaborative, browser-based canvas, while Illustrator’s eraser has handled vector path editing natively for years, and Photoshop’s eraser works on raster pixels rather than paths at all. The table below compares how each tool actually behaves.

The biggest practical difference isn’t raw capability, since Illustrator’s vector tools remain more mature overall, it’s context. Figma’s eraser and recolor tools live inside a multiplayer canvas your whole team already has open, so a quick fix doesn’t require exporting a file, opening Illustrator, and re-importing the result.

What Other New Tools Shipped Alongside the Eraser?

The eraser and recolor tools arrived as part of a wider set of precise image-editing features Figma has been rolling out through 2026. Earlier in the year, on February 4, 2026, Figma introduced Vectorize, an AI-powered feature that turns raster images like hand-drawn logos, lettering, or scanned illustrations into fully editable vector layers directly on the canvas, without exporting to a separate app first.

Together, Vectorize and the new eraser and recolor tools cover most of a designer’s raster-to-vector cleanup workflow inside Figma itself: convert an image to vectors, erase the parts that didn’t trace cleanly, then recolor the regions that need it, all in one canvas session. If you also work with AI-assisted image edits, our Figma AI image editing guide covers the broader toolset these features sit alongside.

How Do You Clean Up a Vectorized Image Step by Step?

Start by converting your raster image with Vectorize, then follow these steps to turn the raw trace into a polished, usable illustration.

1. Run Vectorize on your source image and review the resulting paths before editing anything.
2. Group the layers that belong to one visual element, like a logo mark, so later edits apply to the whole shape at once.
3. Enter vector edit mode on the group and press Shift+E to switch to the eraser.
4. Drag across any stray marks, uneven edges, or artifacts the trace picked up from noise in the original image.
5. Switch to the recolor tool, pick your target color, and drag across each region that needs the new fill.
6. Press Escape to exit edit mode, then zoom out to check the whole shape reads correctly at normal size.

This sequence, trace, group, erase, recolor, review, replaces what used to be a multi-app workflow: exporting a rough trace out of Figma, cleaning it up in Illustrator, then re-importing the finished asset. Keeping every step on one canvas also means teammates can watch the cleanup happen live instead of waiting for a new file version.

How Do Design Systems Teams Use These Tools?

Icon libraries benefit the most from the recolor tool specifically, since a typical design system might define the same icon shape in a dozen color variants for different states: default, hover, disabled, and brand-specific themes. Instead of duplicating a layer and manually swapping each fill, a designer can drag the recolor tool across a duplicated icon once per variant, cutting a repetitive task down to a handful of drags.

The eraser tool sees the most use during the audit phase of a design system refresh, when teams review old icon sets for inconsistent stroke widths, stray anchor points left over from years of small edits, or shapes that don’t align to the current grid. Cleaning those up used to require exporting each icon to Illustrator; now it’s a same-canvas fix that keeps the whole library’s version history in one place.

What Are Best Practices for Using the Eraser and Recolor Tools?

Group related shapes before erasing across them, so a single drag cleans up the whole illustration instead of requiring you to repeat the same motion shape by shape. This matters most on icon sets and line art built from many small overlapping paths.

Duplicate the layer before making large erase edits. Figma’s version history covers most mistakes, but a duplicate gives you an instant, no-scroll fallback if an aggressive erase removes more of the path than intended.

Use the recolor tool for palette exploration, not just cleanup. Because it fills multiple regions in one drag, it’s a fast way to try three or four color variations on an icon set before committing, instead of manually updating each shape’s fill property for every variation.

Is This Available on Figma’s Free Plan?

Yes. The eraser and recolor tools ship as part of Figma’s core vector editing toolset, available on the free Starter plan as well as paid Professional, Organization, and Enterprise tiers. There’s no separate add-on or seat upgrade required to use them, unlike some of Figma’s newer AI features which are gated behind usage credits on certain plans.

That makes it a meaningful upgrade for solo designers and small teams who rely on Figma’s free tier, not just enterprise accounts. If you’re exploring what else changed in Figma recently, our guides to Figma Agent Skills, Figma Motion, and Figma’s nested folders update cover other 2026 releases worth knowing about.

How Does This Affect Design Handoff to Developers?

Cleaner vector paths export cleaner SVG and code. A path with leftover stray anchor points or slivers from an old raster trace often generates messier SVG markup when a developer inspects or exports it, with unnecessary path segments that add file size without adding visual detail. Erasing those artifacts before handoff means the exported code is closer to what a developer would hand-write themselves.

Because the eraser and recolor tools work in the same file developers already inspect for specs, there’s no separate export step to keep in sync. A designer can clean up an icon during a design review call and the updated shape is immediately visible to anyone else with the file open, without a re-upload or a new share link.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Figma vector eraser tool?

It’s a built-in tool in Figma’s vector edit mode and Draw mode that lets you erase parts of a vector path by dragging over them, with Figma automatically recalculating the surrounding anchor points so the shape stays clean.

How do I activate the Figma vector eraser tool?

Select a vector shape, enter vector edit mode or Draw mode, then press Shift+E to switch to the eraser. Drag across the part of the path you want to remove.

Does the Figma vector eraser tool work on raster images?

No, it edits vector paths only. To turn a raster image into editable vectors first, use Figma’s separate Vectorize feature, then erase or recolor the resulting vector layers.

Is the Figma vector eraser tool free to use?

Yes. It’s part of Figma’s core vector editing tools and is available on the free Starter plan, with no separate purchase or credit system required.

Can I recolor several vector shapes at once in Figma?

Yes. The new recolor tool lets you choose a color or gradient, then drag across multiple regions or shapes to fill them all in a single motion, instead of updating each layer’s fill property individually.

Does the eraser tool replace Illustrator for vector editing?

Not entirely. Illustrator still has more mature vector tools overall, but for quick cleanup on artwork that already lives in Figma, the built-in eraser and recolor tools remove the need to round-trip through another app for simple fixes.

Can I use the Figma vector eraser tool on component instances?

Not directly. Component instances inherit their shape from the main component, so you need to edit the main component itself, or detach the instance first, before the eraser can change its underlying path.

Does erasing part of a vector shape affect its exported SVG code?

Yes, in a good way. Removing stray anchor points and cleaning up messy traces typically produces simpler, smaller SVG output when the shape is later exported or inspected by a developer.