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Sterphy
Sterphy
Known Participant
September 28, 2022
Open for Voting

Folders in After Effects timeline

  • September 28, 2022
  • 130 replies
  • 17431 views
Timeline folders. We have them in Animate, Photoshop, Illustrator... precomps can utterly ruin your work and is NOT an alternatives to having a simple folder hierarchy - especially when dealing with shape layers or anything that requires continual rasterization.

    130 replies

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    DaciaSaenz
    DaciaSaenz
    Inspiring
    June 11, 2025

    Y'all... we all want folders. We have your requests. And we have no new news. And if we did have news, we wouldn't be able to share it until the feature was public. 

    @Sterphy, what do you want us to respond in the meantime?  A lot of the people in this thread responding to you are individual contributors on this team. We're doing our best to advocate for features that we know users want, including folders in the timeline. 


    The fight continues. 

     

    - Dacia Saenz, AE & PR Engineering Teams
      real_5081
      Known Participant
      February 22, 2026

      All this crap you've jammed into AE and you couldn't find time to include timeline folders? Are you being led by a lunatic?

        Sterphy
        SterphyAuthor
        Known Participant
        June 10, 2025

        I wonder if he'll reply this decade 

        Sterphy
        SterphyAuthor
        Known Participant
        June 10, 2025

        It's no wonder their rating is 1.2* out of 5 on Trustpilot! 

        Sterphy
        SterphyAuthor
        Known Participant
        May 30, 2025

        Incredible that Adobe staff can't even bring themselves to even respond to this. 

          smanole
          Participant
          March 14, 2025

          @llealloo it was @Sterphy simulation from 2022. We might not have groups for timeline layers but at least we have thread grouping in Adobe Community :))

            llealloo
            llealloo
            Known Participant
            March 14, 2025

            @JohnColombo17100380thanks for merging the topics together!

             

            Any chance you could speak with your team about this feature request and let us know what they say? i.e. How feasible is this from a software engineering standpoint? I am curious to know, because if it is too hard I would like to stop asking about it. It would be nice to hear something/anything from the team at Adobe, because we have been asking for this for over 10 years with no response. Appreciate anything you can do to inform us of the vibe over there!

             

            Warm regards,

            Leah - 21 year AE expression & scripting expert, 18 years professional experience in motion graphics

              llealloo
              llealloo
              Known Participant
              March 14, 2025

              We are even pulling out the OG fonts (nice one @smanole with the Bank Gothic) to help get the point across. Let's keep it going folks!

                smanole
                Participant
                March 14, 2025

                Hi Adobe Team,

                I wanted to bring up a life-saving feature that I believe would greatly improve the workflow in After Effects: layer grouping. Currently, the only way to organize multiple layers is by pre-composing them. However, once layers are pre-comped, all editing is confined to the precomp, making it difficult to adjust them later in the main composition. This is especially challenging for large, complex projects where you might want to maintain a higher level of flexibility.

                In comparison, other Adobe tools like Photoshop and Illustrator have implemented the ability to group layers, making it easier to manage elements without losing direct control over the layers themselves. After Effects could benefit from this functionality as well, providing a better way to organize and manipulate layers without resorting to cumbersome precompositions.

                I’m aware that this topic has been raised by multiple users in the past, but it’s still not available. I hope that Adobe will consider adding this feature in a future update, as it would significantly enhance the usability and efficiency of the software.

                Thank you for considering this suggestion!

                Best regards,

                Stefan

                  melbendi
                  melbendi
                  Inspiring
                  March 5, 2025

                  Agreed!

                    llealloo
                    llealloo
                    Known Participant
                    March 5, 2025

                    I, for one, would love to see Adobe take a break focusing on adding AI tools to their products and spend half as much effort on fixing these systemic UX issues that have been going on for decades. I would be a much happier loyal customer if this happened.

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