Feature Requests

Property panel is great when dealing with complicated and nested shape layers.But adding fills, strokes, rectangles, or modifiers like merge paths, offset paths needs you to go in the timeline.It will be really easier if there was an ‘add’ bottom in the Properties panel, then what you choose to be added is added to the selected properties!My Request:Adding ‘Add’ button to the Properties panel for adding special shape groups like the one beside the ‘Content’ property group.How it will help my workflow:It is very helpful when dealing with complex shape layer and stylize them!Upvote if you like the Idea!Property panel 

Often rendering social media files with safe area guide layer that would be nice to not see when playback

Currently, the only way to prevent accidental spatial movement of a layer is to use the global "Layer Lock." However, this prevents all other interactions (trimming, adding effects, color grading, or adjusting masks).In workflows like conforming, color grading, or technical compositing, we often need to ensure a layer remains at its exact coordinates without freezing the entire layer. A simple accidental press of an arrow key or a "click-and-drag" in the Composition window can create sub-pixel shifts or black edges that are hard to spot until the final QC.Proposed Solution Individual Property Locking: Add a "lock" icon next to the Transform group in the Timeline. Clicking it would disable any spatial changes (Position, Scale, Rotation, Anchor Point) while keeping the layer selectable and editable for effects. Visual Indicator: A small lock icon visible next to the "Transform" text when the layer is unrolled. Preferences: Add a setting in Preferences > General to "Auto-lock Trans

please go back to the old UI when it comes to opening saved projects. When I click the project on my coputer it should just to open. Skip the homepage, just open the project. Premiere does this, why does AE have this extra unnecessary step? 

More than ever, motion design projects need to work across different aspect ratios, typically 1920×1080px (standard for 16:9 videos) and 1080×1920px (for Instagram and TikTok videos). Adding a simple composition orientation button — similar to the one already available in Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign — would greatly improve the composition creation workflow.

It would be great to be able to collect a project from the Commandline. It would be great to collect data from a project to a json file without having to pop open the UI for the app. It would be great to be able to swap media without having to save out and string parse an .aepx file.How would one automate this?aerender already works headlessly, but is not useful for anything other than rendering.That’s my human request. I’ll attach my AI one here for the bots:  ---  Summary  After Effects lacks a documented, reliable command-line interface for headless script execution. This is a significant barrier to integrating After Effects into professional VFX pipelines, where every other  major DCC application provides this capability as a first-class feature.  ---  The Problem  In a VFX production pipeline, artists work across multiple applications — Nuke, Maya, and Houdini — that are managed by pipeline tools responsible for:  - Opening projects and collecting metadata (shot info, asset refere

I would like a feature that allows me to import zip file sequentially numbered files into After Effects without unzipping them.

While its not a solution for everyone, Figma’s autolayout is incredibly helpful for grouping blocks of elements together with some level of relationship to each other (gaps, margins). The ability to create this type of dynamic frame and then add a fill to it would be huge. I’ve recently had to mimic an autolayout frame for an icon and two stacked lines of text. It works, but its a lot of layers just to make the relationship work, keep the elements centered, then add dummy layers so that I could 1) make a set height for a button and then 2) use SourceRect at time to make the width dynamic. Super fantastic but also highly impractical. 8 layers in total needed for 3 elements and a fill. So I’m hoping that a FR for something more native (even without all the bells and whistles found in Figma or PenPot or UX tool of your choice) would be incredibly useful.

I'm getting acquainted with the "search" function on the timeline and discovered something that surprised me.If I filter the layers through SEARCH and press cmd+A, then I select not those that are displayed after filtering, but all the layers. And if I delete, then all the layers are deleted, not those that were displayed. What's the point of this filter then?I suggest fixing this and making the cmd+A combination select only those layers that are displayed using the filter. This way you can quickly delete unnecessary layers. I have to manually "circle the area" with the mouse, it's not convenient, well, if there are a lot of layers and in general you can make mistakes due to inaccuracy of movement, it's an unnecessary "headache". Maybe it's just a bug, I don't know. But at the moment it works like this.The AE version is the latest.

Why is the order of the channels ABGR? And why not make checkboxes in stead of dropdown menu’s?Very outdated UI. 

After Effects is still very slow when using javascript. There is now competition from companies like Cavalry. Way faster to work and way faster to render.A great example is attached. Just previewing some files that use Javascript and Vegas. Slow as.It’s about time the programme was re-written from the ground up. 

After Effects really needs a native “Edge Extend” effect, like Nuke’s EdgeExtend or the AE plugin Extendo, that takes the clean color from inside a matted object and pushes that RGB outward into the soft edge region so dark, contaminated, haloed, or premult-damaged fringe pixels are replaced with colors that actually match the object. This would make it much easier to fix ugly edge artifacts in greenscreen, roto, hair, motion blur, semi-transparent details, spill, and premult cleanup.

I would like to see the ability to "pin" projects to the After Effects home screen. This way, commonly used projects (templates, etc.) could be quickly accessed along with recent files. Similar to how Photoshop or Illustrator have "templates" to choose from when you start a new file (and how you can create your own from this area). Pinned projects could be shown at the top of/above the "recent files" listing. The value is always having projects you need/use handy even when you've worked on a ton of other stuff between usages. I see this being something all programs could benefit from.      Home screen in AE.       "Create New" in Photoshop       "Create New" in Illustrator

Please find a way to compact the Puppet Pin animation tracks.It’s quite roomy to have two lines for each Pin.Puppet animations often require a lot of pins, and most of the time, only position is animated. There is currently no way to only show the position tracks of the Pins, it always comes with the ‘Puppet Pin’ header, which is useless. 

Once in a while, I need a ‘pixel copy’ of a layer to use in an effect. CC Composite promises to do something alike, but, unfortunately, it does not work when a layer does not match the comp size.What I am looking for is a plugin that copies the exact ‘output’ of a layer, as if it were soloed - RGBA, all pixels, comp size, no transformations. Kind of like how Track Mattes work for alpha and luma.    Such an effect would open a world of possibilities - almost like node based compositing.

Heyyy, I was wondering if it would be possible for AE to consider introducing a Commander feature. This feature could function like a command line, allowing users to easily access tools, effects, plugins, shapes, layer styles, scripts, and essentially everything in AE. It's similar to the convenience of Cmd + C in Cinema 4D (please take a look at the attached screenshot). Currently, I'm using FX Console, which is helpful but it's got its limits. I've noticed the search tool under the Help window, which is great, but I was wondering if there could be a shortcut to streamline the process. This way, users wouldn't have to navigate the mouse, click on Help, and then return to the keyboard to type in the tools they need.   @dave jacobson has shared this idea & script before, and here is the discussion link: The Commander - A Universal Launcher Script - Adobe Community - 7476888 

Currently RAM Preview has two playback options – either it loops, or it doesn’t.It would be great to also have the option to ping pong (play to the end of the preview, then reverse playback and return to the first frame, then play forwards as normal again, ping ponging back and forth). This is particularly useful for animation workflows, but also applicable to VFX workflows as well.

I'm sure this has been posted before on here, but for visibility and emphasis how does AE not have a relinking system like Premiere after 10+ years?? I'm working on a particular project where despite all the assets being scattered across mutliple folders on a server, AE insists as relinking one by one. Most times I don't have this issue as it finds them on it's own, but for whatever reason it's going very slow, manually relinking file by file. This is on a collected project. Regardless of the reason or situation, it wouldn't be an issue if we had a relinking system like Premiere's file manager for footage. Is there some technical reason Adobe hasn't addressed or improved such an important function on large AE projects after a decade??

first: it’s cool we can now import scg :-) I really often get logos in svg. but:the svg imports as one frame long comp in 30fps.my settings for sequenzes are 25fps. I just need the svg as a logo for a duration of 7 sec.Now I have to deep dive into the comp, change the lengh, the fps and it’s not so coolI would like to get the option to import the svg just like a jpg or any ober picture.

I am building an automated system, where I need to connect a lot of layers each to their own Track Matte. I can think of an expression that takes the layer names and link all to a Track Matte with a related name. Unfortunately Track Matte selection is not possible via Expressions.Would be great to have!

Create a Shape Layer. Name it “1”.Duplicate it, using cmd-D (ctrl-D on Windows). See how the layer name of the duplicate is “2”, and above “1”. In many cases, making numbered layers, requires the duplicates appear UNDER the original. This has to done manually for each duplicate.My request: let alt-cmd-D or shift-cmd-D do that in one go: create Duplicate under the original.

Enable the Reference Layer parameter in effects to select layers from any composition in the project, allowing cross-composition layer referencing instead of restricting the selection to layers within the current composition.Also make it expression enabled. These small changes would greatly improve the compositing workflow and bring After Effects closer to a node-based compositing approach.

Please add gpu acceleration Gpu acceleration for Keylight and Matte effects. The are really slow also on powerful machines.

If I have a specific color composition background color for my animation, and export it to an mp4 (or so) it gets black. Would be nice if Ae interprets it as a solid and renders it out as this color. 

We need a native UV texture mapper in AE as well as a real vector motion blur for vector passes from blender. Also depth of field has always looked terrible in AE with bad fringing from a depth matte. I’m not asking for AE to be nuke but it could try a little harder on the 3D compositing side of things. Not having every effect be 32 bit in an OCIO setup is pretty rough as well.