Why do people use Spacer components? 

Personally, I prefer using Auto Layout wrappers and controlling spacing with gaps but there might be a use case I'm overlooking?

Made some pros and cons below 👇

✅ - Because Figma doesn't have styles for spacing(yet), its the easiest way to componentize your spacing system.

✅ - Spacers lead to layouts with a flatter structure. 

Less nested wrappers can be easier to reason about but ends up being more layers.

❌ - Having invisible elements in a layout leads to difficult-to-debug layouts.

You've often missed a spacer somewhere.

❌ - Seems obvious but, they don't work well in lists compared to using gap.

You need to select and change multiple items to adjust the spacing.

❌ - Your engineering team needs to be onboard. 

Either they need to switch to using the same pattern or they'll need to translate Spacers into gaps and margins.

Spacer Components