The Connect tab links text nodes that don’t have a key yet to keys that already exist in your Localazy project, matched by their content. Reach for it when you have text that was designed, pasted, or imported before the plugin ever saw it, and you would rather reconnect it to strings you already have than upload everything again.

Every node the plugin uploads carries a key that ties it to its string in Localazy (see Keys & node identification). A node that has never been uploaded or downloaded has no key yet, so the plugin has no way to know it belongs with a string you already translated. Connect closes that gap. It finds the keyless nodes, looks for a source string whose text matches, and lets you link the two.

Scanning for matches #️⃣

Open the Connect tab and press Scan for matches. The plugin reads the source strings from your Localazy project and compares them against the text nodes in scope.

Connect uses the same scope as upload and download: your current selection, or the active page or the whole file when nothing is selected, following the Upload and download the entire file setting. Nodes that already have a key are left out, since there is nothing to reconnect.

You can decide how strict the matching should be before you scan, under Scan settings.

Match strictness #️⃣

Match strictness sets how close a node’s text has to be to a source string before Connect counts it as a match. It starts on Exact + normalized.

• Exact matches only links text that is identical to the source string once the surrounding whitespace is trimmed.
• Exact + normalized also accepts differences in letter case and spacing, so “Get Started” and “get started” still line up.
• All (including fuzzy) adds approximate matches for text that is close but not identical, like a small typo or a lightly reworded line. Each fuzzy match shows how similar it is as a percentage.

Loosen the strictness when a scan misses nodes you expected to see, and tighten it when a match looks wrong.

Reviewing and linking #️⃣

A scan sorts the results into two segments, To link and Ignored, each with a count next to it.

To link holds every node that found at least one matching key. Each row shows the node’s text, the frame it sits in, and a badge for how it matched: exact, normalized, or fuzzy. Two buttons let you check a match before you act on it:

• Focus this node selects the text node in Figma and centers it in the view.
• Focus the node it would link to jumps to a node in the file that already uses that key, so you can compare the two. If no node uses it yet, the plugin tells you.

When a node matches more than one key, a dropdown lets you pick which key to use. Connect preselects the strongest match, so you only step in when you want a different one.

The buttons at the bottom follow your selection. Tick a few rows and the link button counts them, reading Link (3) and linking only those three. Leave everything unticked and it reads Link all and takes the whole segment. The Ignore button beside it behaves the same way.

When you link, Connect writes the key onto each node, confirms with a short message such as “Linked 4 node(s)”, and focuses the nodes it just changed. From then on a linked node behaves like any other keyed node: it uploads and downloads under its key, and the key rides along when you copy it (see Copying and duplicating nodes).

Nodes in scope that found no match at the current strictness are not listed. Connect counts them under the list instead, so you can tell at a glance whether loosening the strictness might surface more.

Ignoring nodes #️⃣

Not every keyless node should be linked. A brand new label or a piece of static text you never translate has no business matching an old key. Select those rows and Ignore them, or use Ignore all when nothing is selected, and Connect sets them aside so they stop turning up as candidates on later scans.

The choice is reversible. Ignored nodes move to the Ignored segment, where the Restore button brings them back to To link, either the ones you select or all of them at once. Like a key, the ignore mark lives on the node itself, so it travels with copies too.