How to export Figma icons as SVG to a Google Drive kit folder

what does "kit-style export" actually mean?

A kit folder is a shared Google Drive directory that acts as a single source of truth for design assets — icons, illustrations, components. Anyone on the team pulls from it instead of hunting through Slack threads or email attachments. For icons specifically, SVG is the standard: scalable, editable, and format-agnostic enough to work in code, Figma, Notion, or anywhere else.

Kit-style export means each icon lands in that folder with a consistent name, in the right format, without detours through your local machine. The discipline isn't technical — it's about removing the steps where things go wrong.

why SVG is the right format for a shared icon kit

SVG files stay sharp at any size, carry no unnecessary weight for simple icons, and open cleanly in browsers, design tools, and code editors without conversion. PNG alternatives require separate files per resolution. PDFs aren't directly usable in most front-end contexts. For an icon kit that serves both designers and developers, SVG is the only format that works everywhere without extra handling.

Figma exports SVGs faithfully — preserving paths, fills, and structure — as long as the layers are named clearly before export. That naming step is where most manual workflows introduce inconsistency.

how to set up your Figma file for clean SVG exports

Before exporting, the layer structure matters. Each icon should be its own frame or component, named exactly as it should appear in Drive. Figma uses the layer name as the export filename. If your layers are named Icon / Arrow / Right, the exported file will carry forward that slash structure — which creates subfolders on some systems and breaks filenames on others. Flatten the naming: icon-arrow-right is clean, portable, and searchable.

Set the export format to SVG at the frame or component level. For a kit with dozens of icons, select all relevant frames at once — Figma supports bulk export settings. Apply SVG to the selection in the Export panel before triggering any export action.

how to export Figma icons as SVG directly to a Google Drive folder

With ExportHub installed, the flow changes from five steps to two. Select the icon frames in Figma, open ExportHub, and choose your destination folder in Google Drive — the shared kit folder your team already uses. If it doesn't exist yet, create it from inside the plugin without leaving Figma.

ExportHub respects the SVG format set in Figma's Export panel. It reads the export settings already applied to the selected layers and sends the files in that format. No format re-selection inside the plugin — what you set in Figma is what lands in Drive. The files appear in the kit folder immediately, correctly named, without passing through your Downloads folder.

For teams managing multiple icon sets — product icons, marketing icons, brand marks — ExportHub supports multiple Google accounts in the same session, so you can push to different Drive organisations without logging in and out.

how to rename icons before they land in the kit folder

ExportHub lets you rename assets before export. This matters when your Figma layer names follow a file-organisation convention that differs from what your Drive kit expects — for example, if layers use a component naming system but the Drive folder expects kebab-case filenames without prefixes.

Rename directly in the plugin before hitting export. The Drive file gets the new name; the Figma layer stays untouched. No post-upload renaming, no mismatches between what's in Figma and what's in the kit.

keeping the kit folder consistent over time

A kit folder only works as a single source of truth if every export follows the same pattern. The breakdown usually happens when someone is in a hurry: they export locally, upload manually, and either skip the rename or drop the file one folder too high. Two weeks later, the kit has duplicates, inconsistent names, and files in the wrong place.

Routing exports through ExportHub enforces the same destination and format every time. The folder is selected once per session — it doesn't reset between exports. For teams with a defined kit structure, that consistency is the actual value: not just speed, but reliability.

If you're rethinking your broader export setup, exporting from Figma to Google Drive without downloading locally covers the general case in full. For format decisions beyond icons, PNG vs SVG for Figma exports to Google Drive works through the tradeoffs in detail.

what about existing icon kits already in Drive?

ExportHub works with any existing folder structure in your connected Google Drive accounts. Navigate to the existing kit folder in the plugin's folder selector and export directly into it. New files are added without affecting what's already there. If you're updating an icon — exporting a revised version of an existing SVG — the new file will sit alongside the old one unless you delete the previous version manually. Drive doesn't auto-replace on upload.

For teams running versioned kits, the convention of appending a version suffix to filenames before export — handled in the rename step — keeps the history clear without cluttering the main kit directory.

using ExportHub with a team on multiple Drive accounts

Design agencies and distributed teams often work across multiple Google Workspace accounts — a client's Drive, an internal Drive, a contractor's shared folder. ExportHub supports multiple connected Google accounts simultaneously. Switch between them in the plugin to send icons to the right destination without re-authenticating each time.

This is the scenario where the manual workflow breaks most noticeably: you have to sign in and out of Drive in the browser, navigate to the right folder, and upload — repeated per client, per project, per export run. Consolidating that into the plugin makes cross-account kit management workable at scale. Why the Figma export loop slows design teams down goes into the time cost of this pattern across a real project cycle.

get the plugin

ExportHub is free. Install it from the Figma Community, connect your Google account, and your icon kit exports go directly to Drive. Get the free plugin.