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January 30, 2026
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After Effects QoL Features Mega Thread

  • January 30, 2026
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Creating this as a thread for all small tweaks and suggestions to help everyday use.

1.Being able to disable lock contraint for scale for selected layers in one go
 

  1. Being able to control additional layer properties via expressions, i.e. visibility.  This will need to be reflected in the layer visibility icon for example, that the visibility is connected to an expression
  2. Being able to replace sound files and control sound properties like volume in Essential Graphics
  3. If a layer has an expression, it would be nice to have an additional icon to be able to jump to the layer/layers, reference in that expression, and visa versa
  4. Direct Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets access for spreadsheets, rather than having to create a middleman csv/tsv file
    1. When using a linked csv/tsv and a user control dropdown effect, you can access the rows in the file with the dropdown by using “csv.dataValue”. This maps the dropdown index to the rows.  When adding this to essential graphics to override the spreadsheet data,  it is not possible to use he dataValue, and each row option in essential graphics, needs a hardcoded if else statement. 

      See the two examples: 
      https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/18zzcxc699rm6agq7d4md/data_test_01.aep?rlkey=1ptvdgxp3tqfrhomd0btrh9ml&st=almzl5d3&dl=0 

      and
      https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/jd720u332njk32q8zidao/data_test_02.aep?rlkey=zaziwdtcfwwqrq0hpkcet84rz&st=eux1rosi&dl=0
  5. Having expressions syntax highlighted by default (or at least with a preference), rather than seeing the expression in the default white ui colour, until you click into it