Community Manager

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Introducing Quick Apply — Now in Public Beta

Forum|Forum|2 months ago
February 23, 2026
18 replies
2603 views

Quick Apply was released in After Effects 26.2. Ongoing improvements will be posted here as they are made available in the Beta builds.

Hi all!

We are very excited to unveil Quick Apply in After Effects (Beta) 26.2.0.30 or higher. Quick Apply is a search box that puts every effect, animation preset, and menu command right at your fingertips. Type a few characters, pick what you want, and apply or run it. It’s that simple.

Effects — Search by name or category and apply to the selected layer, or create a new Solid or Adjustment layer with the effect already applied.
Animation Presets — Search and apply text presets and other animation presets to the selected layer, or to a new layer or adjustment layer.
Menu Commands — Search and run any top-level menu command, including access to blending modes, installed scripts, and preferences.

Showing result for “glow” in Quick Apply

To open the Quick Apply dialog

Edit menu > Quick Apply
Ctrl+Enter (Windows) / Cmd+Return (macOS) — the shortcut can also customized.
The Quick Apply button in the Timeline (between the search field and the mini-flowchart button).

The search box will be focused when the dialog opens, so you can start typing your search right away.

In the Edit Menu	Keyboard Shortcut	In the Timeline

Search, Apply, & Modifier Keys

Search for items by their name, menu, or category. Results update as you type. Searching is fuzzy and sorts results by the closest match.
Select an item in the list, then apply or run it by pressing Enter, clicking Apply/Run, or double-clicking. You can use the up ↑ and down ↓ arrows to change selection in the list, but left ← and right → arrows allow you to keep editing your text if needed.
Modifiers (Effects and Presets): Hold Ctrl (Windows) / Cmd (macOS) and press Enter to create a new solid or layer with the effect or preset applied. Hold Ctrl+Alt (Windows) / Cmd+Option (macOS) and press Enter to create a new adjustment layer. The hint area at the bottom of the dialog shows these options when you have an effect or preset selected.

Apply to the selected layer(s)	Create new layer	Add as adjustment layer

Settings & Filters

Use the Settings (the wrench icon) menu in the dialog to select the categories of results you want shown in your search.

You can also type e:, p:, or m: at the start of your search to limit the result to only effects, presets, or menu commands.

Start search with e: for only effects	Start search with p: for only presets

Select where the Quick Apply dialog will appear when you open it—either in the most recent location (default) or next to your mouse (enable "Show at Mouse Location").

We want your feedback

Quick Apply is in Public Beta because we want to make it great with your input. Try it out—apply effects, drop in presets, run commands—and let us know what works, what doesn’t, and what would make it even more useful. Your feedback will directly shape how Quick Apply evolves.

Thank you for being a part of After Effects (Beta),

John, After Effects Engineering Team

Show previous replies

Davide_Boscolo

Inspiring

This is really good John!
Any chance to make it work with expressions too? I'm using quickmenu at the moment to search through my expression library (txt files in a custom folder) and apply them to the selected property.

JohnColombo17100380

Author

Community Manager

Hi @Davide_Boscolo,

Thank you for this feedback! After Effects doesn’t currently have functionality for saving/loading expressions (though it’s been highly requested). As future functionality is considered, having expressions within Quick Apply could definitely be a possibility. I’d love to hear more about you’d imagine that working and how it would best fit into your flow.

Cheers,

John

Davide_Boscolo

Inspiring

Thank you John.
My ideal workflow would be:

select one property (or more than one)
seach and apply my saved expression with Quick Apply.

I think this is intuitive and straithforward.

🤔Now, how do you want a user to save these expressions and where to save them?

Personally I would like to be able to save them from AE.
Select the expression and “Save expression to file”. Or.. what about an entry at the bottom of this list?

I do prefer to save them to a custom folder (or have to option to do so) so I don't have to worry about migrating the library when updating AE. I would pick a cloud folder to make sure they are synched across devices and in a safe space.

Thank you for listening.

N

nthArt

Participant

In addition to effects, presets, and menu commands, I would love to be able to use this to invoke scripts, too. Some scripts show up in a menu, so maybe they would be accessible as a menu command. However, I have a lot of scripts that I would like to use as easily as any other command and Quick Apply would be the ideal way to execute them.

JohnColombo17100380

Author

Community Manager

Hi @nthArt,

As of the latest AE (Beta) build 26.3.0.5, you can now access all installed scripts inside Quick Apply.

Cheers,

John

S

simon0815

Inspiring

Will there be also a quick export possibility for PNG images? :-)

JohnColombo17100380

Author

Community Manager

Hi @simon0815,

Thank you for this feedback! Right now, we want to keep Quick Apply focused on applying effects/presets/commands, but we hear the need for this functionality is strong. Can you tell me more about how you’d imagine using this beyond the existing Save Frame As… functionality?

Thanks again,

John

Shebbe

Community Expert

@JohnColombo17100380 I can give some perspective from my workflow as I also would love to see a ‘quick-save’ ish feature.

What sets FX Console apart from Save Frame As… is that you can instantly save to JPG or PNG, it summons the ‘choose location’ popup window immediately and after confirmation no additional clicks are needed. This means it is at least 2 clicks less than AE's best implementation.

What makes it even more powerful is Copy to Clipboard. In most of the cases I need to share frames, I need to share them in chat applications or email. For this to work there is no need to save it to a file at all. Just to clipboard and it can be immediately pasted into the chat.

I also use Greenshot for other desktop screen grabs where sometimes I also draw and make notes on. If I need to do that with a comp frame I also do a Copy to Clipboard and open the clipboard into Greenshot.

Similarly in some occassions I go into Photoshop, File→ New → from Clipboard for the resolution → Paste.

So definitely room for some QoL on AE’s side I think. But I don't know what a suitable location for it would be. Probably just top bar menu entries and keyboard shortcuts?

Shebbe

Community Expert

Great to finally see this functionality native.

Here's some feedback based on extensively using FX Console for a few years.

Appearance:

I think the window is too big for no specific reason. When nothing is typed yet it already lists everything that passes the global filter setting up to some maximum count (stops around the letter ‘R’). Contrast this with FX Console which is almost only a search field but starts showing results once you type. I would rather see no results at all but show maybe up to 8 entries once you start typing.

The popup is an OS based window but is this really necessary? It would look much cleaner and integrated in the main UI if the top window bar was removed. The window simply closes itself when clicked outside of it or the shortcut command is executed again.

Functionality:

It would be useful to be able to define favorites to force them to the top.
A nice to have would be quick slots and blacklisting similar to FX Console. It allows you to conjure the quick menu then follow it by a number keystroke to instantly apply the element defined on that quickslot. Like CTRL+Enter → [1] → adds a Fill effect. Blacklist to exclude elements from ever appearing.

Thanks!

JohnColombo17100380

Author

Community Manager

Thank you for this feedback, @Shebbe. It’s very appreciated. We do have more limitations on what we can use as UI than a third-party does (i.e. branding guideline, UI frameworks), but the suggestions on functionality are good ones.

Paul Slemmer

Participating Frequently

I’d present the comp mini-flowchart as a precedent for a transient dialog that doesn’t need a system UI header. I know there are some restrictions in the guidelines for floating windows but this feels more akin to the mini-flowchart than a full modal.

Szalam

Community Expert

LOVE THIS. I’ve been using the free FX Console (and, more recently, the paid Quick Menu since it doesn’t conflict with the Properties Panel) for this. Having it native is going to be great.

Thoughts:

It’s nice that I can pick where it pops up. At first, I thought I’d want it to be where the mouse is, but I’m so used to Quick Menu in the middle of the screen at this point that I’m just going to go with the default.
ECSTATIC that I can apply it to a new solid or a new adjustment layer. That is going to be one of those little time savers that adds up so much throughout a day’s work.
Not sure what I think about the text at the bottom switching between “apply to new layer” and “apply to new solid” depending on whether it’s a type animation preset or an effect. It makes the text at the bottom jump in a distracting way. Not a huge deal, but maybe just “layer” with no need to differentiate.
Very surprised to stumble across the “Import Recent Footage” being in there as an option when it pulled up some sound clips by their file name as I was typing for something else. Puts me in mind of a feature request to have frequently imported things be a menu instead of (or in addition to) recent. I’ve got some assets I use a lot and it’d be awesome if there were a menu for those for when they slip off of the “recent” area.

Ideas:

I absolutely want to favorite things so that effects I use most (Fractal Noise, Tint, Magic Bullet Looks, etc.) come up first.
I will definitely be changing the keyboard shortcut.
When I’m working fast (which this tool helps with), I don’t want to be using two hands for it. One hand will be hitting the keyboard shortcut (I’ll be using ctrl+space) as my other hand moves from the mouse to the keyboard ready to type in the name of whatever effect/preset/menu item I’m after.
I’d like it to recognize spaces like Quick Menu does. That is, if I type ma bu, I expect Magic Bullet Looks and the Magic Bullet Colorista extension to be top results, but Looks doesn’t show up anywhere near the top - even if I type ma bu lo and Fractal Noise is four items down with frac noi

JohnColombo17100380

Author

Community Manager

Thank you for this feedback, @Szalam! Regarding the search results, the low ranking of Fractal Noise in that case might be a bug. We’ll investigate that more deeply. Hugely appreciate all the other input as well!

QuietRobot

Known Participant

Finally! 👏🏻 some feedback:

🔹 In the search box, the text should be vertically centered and maintain the same proportion as the rest of the search box in the interface.

🔹 The wrench icon should be changed to a gear icon, respecting the Spectrum design (and the dropdown menu arrow like in Photoshop). It should also be located on the right.

🔹Since these menus include buttons, perhaps they should have more padding.

JohnColombo17100380

Author

Community Manager

Thank you, @QuietRobot! We appreciate the feedback. A couple of these improvements are already in-progress and will in an upcoming Beta build.

{KMS}

Known Participant

Looks like a great addition. Looking forward to testing it out.

R

RKahlenberg

Inspiring

It will be good to be able to apply FFX with keyframes at CTI or layer inpoint - the wrench is a good spot to place.

if input is persistent across use-case and sessions then add a Note Pad to copy paste often-used searches

allow user to comment out previous input(s) for easy re-use via copy-paste - use single-line JS-Expression special character to assign beginning of commented input //

add support for FFX subfolders

perhaps language-agnostic Special Commands instead of p,m,e - perhaps ffx,fx,comm (with support for aliases - com,command,menu). Allow for e16, e32 as inputs to search for only defined effects within specified bitrate or add these as checkbox options in the wrench dialog OR allow for both with the input being an override of the wrench setting.

and that ffx icon can easily mislead new users since it’s only got fx - users may think it’s an effect instead of an Animation Effect which is a lot different - spell out the “ffx” fully instead of “fx”.

Might also be a good time to think about FFX 2.0 which is essentially a type of headless/noUI script since more users are writing scripts and also support launching js/jsx from the Quick Apply UI

R

RKahlenberg

Inspiring

I’m doubtful that the 3x Apply options being placed in the current construct is ideal - not good to have mutually exclusive options visually separated in the UI.

I’d prefer all three options within a Drop Menu -
Apply to …
Currently Selected Layers
New Solid Layer
New Adjustment Layer

{KMS}

Known Participant

I think having modifers is the fastest, most streamlined approach. It’s an efficient way to offer several options in a compact space. Dropdown menus in this case would slow the process down. Too many clicks.

Quick Apply was released in After Effects 26.2. Ongoing improvements will be posted here as they are made available in the Beta builds.

To open the Quick Apply dialog

Search, Apply, & Modifier Keys

Settings & Filters

We want your feedback

Appearance:

Functionality:

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