Legend

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Update on the status of Adobe Animate

Forum|Forum|2 months ago
February 3, 2026
41 replies
7641 views

Yesterday, Adobe shared an email with Adobe Animate customers on the future of Animate. What we shared did not meet our standards and caused a lot of confusion and angst within the community. On behalf of Adobe, I want to apologize.

While an email to all Animate customers will go out shortly, we wanted to quickly share a few things: 1) our standard approach for applications in maintenance mode, 2) changes to our plans for Adobe Animate and its status, and 3) our commitments to ensuring that you always have access to your content, regardless of the state of development of an application.

Standard Approach for Applications in Maintenance Mode

If we deprioritize active development of an application, our approach is to move that application into maintenance mode with continued support. Under maintenance mode, the application will continue to be available, will continue to receive security and bug fixes, but will not get new features.

If we decide to go a step further and discontinue a product, we will work closely with the community to ensure they have adequate time to plan in order to minimize disruption and will take steps so that the community continues to have long-term access to their content.

Current State of Adobe Animate

Adobe Animate is in maintenance mode. While we are no longer adding new features to Animate, we will continue to support it and provide ongoing security and bug fixes. More importantly, Animate will continue to be available for both new and existing users. This is a change from what we communicated in the email yesterday for the status of Adobe Animate, its time-frame, and availability.

To be clear, we are not discontinuing or removing access to Adobe Animate and it will continue to be available to both existing and new customers.

Commitments for long-term content/file access

For Adobe Animate, our commitment is to work with the community to ensure users continue to have long-term access to their content, regardless of the state of development of the application.

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Marc Martorell

Participating Frequently

And why don’t you send first the new e-mail communicating this? This is not serious, you are acting in an impulsive manner and losing the trust of your customers. And what about your strategy of slowly letting die applications which show useful for creatives? Honestly, better make Animate open source and in a year this program is better than Toon Boom…

rayek.elfin

Legend

So… Animate is end-of-life now. And even in this backtracking message it is acknowledged that Adobe's management will discontinue the software in the not-so-far-off future?

People: do not trust Adobe management’s words here. Reading between the lines, the messaging is crystal clear. The damage is done. I would not be surprised if this wasn’t meant as a tactic to scare off those corporate partners (animation studios) and larger players still using Animate and force them to abandon Animate. Studios hate uncertainty: they will make plans now to remove Animate from their pipelines.

Then ‘backtrack’ that decisiontemporarily, sit back and observer the exodus away from Animate.

Give it two years, and only a diminished user base will care enough to make much of a racket over the final discontinuation of Animate. All according to plan, right?

It’s all in line with Adobe management's historic behaviour. And a classic gaslighting strategy: first stun your loyal users with apocalyptic messaging. Wait for the uproar. Follow it up with a so-called emphatic message “We did not mean it, and the news is not as bad as it could be, actually! We are only putting Animate on ice, and you can still use it!”

Desperate loyal users change from outraged mode to relief mode “Oh! We are so thankful you listened to us! Thank you Thank you THANK YOU!!!!”

What a disgraceful way to gaslight your users. Shameful. Utterly shameful.

Marc Martorell

Participating Frequently

The worst part is that the company has been trying to kill the app for years, but we still keep using it, and it will continue being the same… don’t this say anything to you Adobe?

U

Ulatek333

Known Participant

So what are the chances we will still be able to import .fla into after effects? And guys, please dont mess around like that anymore. That was stressful.

S

Sammy Red the Betta Fish

Known Participant

Thank you for not discontinuing the adobe animate is good

Sammy the Red the Betta fish

S

Sammy Red the Betta Fish

Known Participant

keep adobe animate please

Sammy the Red the Betta fish

Frosted_Derp

Participant

While it’s not perfect, it’s certainly a breath of fresh air. It’s just a fact that Animate cannot be replaced by the rest of the suite. Making the choice to keep Animate maintained has saved me and others the hassle of moving onto a software that we maybe less familiar with. However, to prevent future scares, I personally will make learning alternative software's a higher priority.

D

Danielle Seitz

Participant

Thanks for the climbdown. Adobe was wise to rethink this decision.

It’s not perfect, however; Adobe should take the next step and return Animate to active status. Animate/Flash users have shown recently that they are fiercely passionate about their software and the work for which they use it. Killing this product off, or simply diminishing it with semi-retirement, would be both a great loss to the creative community and a foolish business decision. Axing the resources for updating and improving the likes of Animate to fund the process of tacking yet more AI features onto your products – and then charging your customers for the privilege – is a little like asking us to lend you the money to buy the shovel you’ll use to dig your own grave.

Long live Animate.

Firewood：D

Inspiring

Can someone tell me if they've fixed this issue? In versions 24.0.9/10/11/12, dragging audio directly into the timeline results in an error pop-up, even though the audio itself imports normally. If they haven't fixed this, then they've really lost all semblance of civility.

Moving it into maintenance mode is a wise move; there are still many developers who can extend it to make Animate even better.

JordanRiver

Inspiring

Oh it’s not just me then! Happens EVERY time… not to mention, half the time audio files entirely don’t import and then you’ve got to re-encode with AME in order to make it work.

kglad

Community Expert

thank you for the clarification.

Speedroller

Participant

The last message before this mentions no new customers would be able to download Animate after March 1st, here you mention it will still be available to both existing and new customers (aka my students). Is there a timeline set on when they would not be able to download and use it anymore, the new customers.
Just wondering because the message on the adobe page has not been updated yet…

For me it would be an absolute shame if Animate would disappear, love the timeline layout, love the workflow, and a very good tool to teach!