Feature Requests

As a heavy After Effects user for almost 20 years, I often find the Project panel very limited. We usually juggle many kinds of assets, mainly JPGs and PNGs, often in the hundreds. I still need to switch to Finder to see larger icon previews because the AE thumbnails feel too small, and there is no way to make them bigger. I think it is time to redesign the Project panel, similar to what Premiere already offers:Ability to view folders and assets in an icon grid layout Ability to zoom in and out on icon size Improved search functionality, including filtering by file kind Instant preview of video and audio files directly in the panel Ability to change Interpret Footage settings (such as frame rate, alpha channel, or loop count) on multiple files at once, instead of doing it one by one Ability to change multiple composition settings at the same time (we currently rely on an external script called CompSetter for this) Ability to see more metadata, such as color space There are probably oth

Simulation effects: Who does not love them?Particle Playground being a native plugin of AE (non Cycore) is very powerful, full of potencial and i love to experiment with it. The issue is that is slow.. incredible slow. And althought there are much better but payed 3rd party plugins it would be nice for AE to have its own 2025-26 GPU accelerated 2d/3d updated particle system internally to properly balance its market competition on this.Does this idea connect with anyone else? 

I think it would be useful to borrow the Lock Workspace feature from Photoshop for After Effects, esp with the wide use of so many scripts and CEP panels in many workflows. I accidentally pull off tabs or slide them around in my day-to-day use of AE, esp since I’m using a Wacom pen most of the time.I’m sure there’s some wrinkles to consider, esp when switching Workspaces while locked - do you prompt with a pop-up or automatically switch it?

Hello!I would like to work with OpenType in After Effects.I have to import the character I want from Illustrator (and then create a shape for that character), and I don´t want that. I want to be able to work natively in AE. Could you make that?Thanks

In C4D you can 'mute' keyframes - essentially this acts like deleting the keyframe except that a dummy 'reference' key is left there, perhaps greyed out, that stores the value(s) and interpolations it had before it was muted. Keyframes to either side behave exactly as if it was not there, until it is un-muted.

Please do NOT remove “COLOR KEY” as an option for After Effects… I use that feature “MORE” than any other keying feature for BROAD key removal projects… thank you!

Premiere Pro remembers the export location for each individual project. So when working on multiple projects concurrently I don’t have to reset where I am exporting to. After Effects should do the same.

I frequently use Collect Files in After Effects, and Watch Folder is located very close to it in the File menu. I have accidentally clicked Watch Folder several times.Watch Folder immediately closes the currently open project and enters Watch Folder mode without a confirmation. My larger projects can take around 5 minutes to reopen, so an accidental click causes a significant interruption.Please add a confirmation dialog before Watch Folder closes the current project, for example: "Entering Watch Folder mode will close your current project. Do you want to continue?"An option to disable or hide Watch Folder would also be helpful.

Right now copying and pasting layers is dependant on selection order. So if I select my layers from bottom and up, then pasting them will result in them being pasted in reverse order. I would like an option in the preferences to say 'Always paste layers in layer order' or something, so that copying and pasting never happens based on selection order and layers are always pasted in the order they are already in my timeline. Hope it makes sense. Thanks.

We want to hear your ideas about how we can improve After Effects. Your opinion is very important to us and the ideas provided here regularly appear in future versions. When posting an idea, here are a couple of things to keep in mind:   How will the idea help your workflow?  You're the expert on your workflow, so tell us how your idea would improve your workflow. What problem are you having today that the idea could solve? That helps us understand your idea better. It also makes it easier for us to follow up with you to get more info on your idea.    One idea per thread If you've got two (or more!) ideas, make each of them a separate thread. Doing this will allow others to vote on a single, specific idea and not confuse up-votes amongst a list of feature requests.   Enlist support! If you feel strongly about a feature, and you know other people do too, get them to vote on it.   

Basically works the same as “Create Shapes/Masks from Text”, but can be used on layers with multiple Mask paths..

As a Photoshop user for several decades, I encountered a structural issue after using After Effects for only a short period of time that I find difficult to understand.When a precomposition contains multiple layers using blending modes such as Multiply and Screen, enabling Collapse Transformations allows those internal blending modes to interact correctly with layers in the parent composition.However, as soon as a Track Matte is applied to the entire precomposition, that pass-through blending behavior is effectively lost.Collapse Transformations and Track Matte are both standard features, and After Effects allows them to be enabled together in the UI. Yet combining them effectively disables an important behavior of one of those features.Photoshop already supports the equivalent concept through Pass Through groups + group masks: internal layers can continue blending with layers outside the group while a mask is applied to the group as a whole.So why is the equivalent structure not possi

Respect the macOS System Settings preference under System Settings → Appearance → Click in the scroll bar toJump to the spot that’s clicked — when this system option is selected, clicking anywhere in the scrollbar track should immediately move the scrollbar thumb to that position, rather than paging up or down.Ideally, both After Effects and Media Encoder should respect the user's existing system setting instead of requiring a separate preference. This would provide a more intuitive and efficient way to navigate long panels and lists.

It would be fantastic if Adobe could open up the color space setting to be modifiable via the C++ SDK. Obviously these are quite new features, but they are not currently exposed to the SDK. I’m working on a plugin to take out the hard part of handling colorspace for artists so they can worry about the work and not the science.NamelyProject - color ENGINEProject - OCIO configProject - working spaceProject - display spaceFootage items in project panel - colourspaceThank you 🙏🏼

The user selects or imports a screenshot containing text. The panel analyzes the letterforms in the image. It searches for visually similar fonts. It displays the closest matches and allows the user to apply or activate the selected font in After Effects.Its Match font, but in after effects.

The current construct of Open Recent is dated and lacks appreciation of how users use the app -  we work on multiple projects at once we create multiple project versions - a strong aversion to losing work is high on everyone’s agenda When coupled, these two realities mean that the Open Recent feature’s options to display only the last 10 projects is hugely lacking.  I’d like the feature to be more contextual - each project and its variants will have its own submenu with up to 10. We can continue with the current 10 recent projects but these are really, really 10 different projects and not variants. On project names with more variance than baseName + numbered suffix, I believe users will be forgiving if the app treats them as a separate project and this is acceptable for projects involving language variations where the baseName may differ. But for general use-cases, once the baseName is identical and only the numbered suffix varies, they should be treated as the same project, with varia

It’s 2025. I open After Effects and… it feels like I’m still working in 2013.While Blender, Unreal Engine, Houdini, and even newer tools like Cavalry are evolving with bold updates, After Effects has barely moved. Every time a new version drops, it’s disappointing to see tiny improvements disguised as “major features.” It’s as if Adobe is keeping the program on life support without actually developing it.Let’s call it out: Graph Editor – still outdated, clunky, and untouched for over a decade. No real-time preview, no modular behavior, no intelligent UI. No modern easing tools – no built-in bounce, elastic, inertia, or overshoot. You still need to rely on Expression tricks or 3rd-party scripts for basic animation finesse. No native effectors or procedural animation tools – while tools like Cavalry, Cinema 4D, and Notch offer real-time procedural workflows and effectors, After Effects is stuck in manual keyframes and precomp hell. Still no native IK (inverse kinemati

The title says it all. Auto-save should function in the background and NOT pop up with an annoying progress bar every time it runs. Gets REALLY bad on large project files when auto-saves take up to a min every single time.Total workflow killer. Should be just like taking snapshots of your project in the background while continue working.The dialog even pops up and steals focus from another app you're in.

I use After Effects for compositing my 3D renders, and I always export 16 or 32 bit EXRs, starting to use ACES. Unfortunately, many, many effects are still only 8 bit, some support 16, and some can do 32. If you don't want to lose me and many other compositors (at least those that are left), please update more effects to 32bit!

This might be a long shot and I dont know if its technically possible to implement, but I think this would be a major improvement to after effects as a whole. I think the easiest way to explain it is looking at the dynamic link feature between premiere and AE, but from AE projects to AE projects.I would have plenty of usecases for this and I it would elevate professional workflows into new heights.Just like having your own library of functions in coding, that you can link in multiple scripts, updating or adding new logic to the source function which automatically integrates in the scripts where its linked to. In this case the function would be an After effects project that you can reuse and implement in other projects and automatically updates in all linked projects if theres changes to the master project.Reallife example: I have a beverage flatlabel that I wrap around a beverage can with UV Map. I use this Label in multiple projects, since theres plenty of different campaigns and

Reporting this as a bug since I can’t see that’s it’s a “feature” or has any use whatsoever. Enabling time remapping on a layer automatically places a keyframe at the in and out points of a layer. Great. Except that the keyframe at the END of the layer apparently does NOT hold the last frame when that layer is extended in time -- simply dragging out the out point of the layer means you will get empty black frames. In order to FREEZE the final frame of a layer, such as for a hold, it’s necessary to step one frame back, set ANOTHER keyframe, then delete the auto created one. Then dragging the layer out will hold the final frame as expected. I’ve never, ever had a scenario in 25 years of work in animation where I’ve wanted a time remapped layer to behave the way that it does by default, and it becomes tedious having to deal with this over and over, and sometimes even gets overlooked then resulting in headscratching as to why, e.g., a precomped layer that’s been time remapped upsteam then

It would be really helpful to be able to animate seeing both at the same time...

As it stands, there’s no easy method to export a single frame from multiple comps. The only Time Span options that can be saved to Render Setting templates are Length of Comp and Work Area. I’d like options such as:First FrameLast FrameA specific frameCustom durations for movies If I could add a handful of comps to the render queue and choose one of my templates set to “Last Frame”, that would be very convenient than manually opening each comp and using Save Frame As.

There must be a reason that After Effects can only have one project open at a time, but this  is the single biggest issue for me. Importing comps is messy, it often ends up importing the entire project. Every other program I use allows to copy and paste between projects within the app, and even between apps (Ae to Pr, PS, Ai, Ai to PS...) but Ae doesn’t allow this seemingly simple feature. Thank you.

Sometimes I need to align many key frames of same layer or even another layer to the same momment in timeline, well you can select keyframes in same vertical level and align all of them to the same second…