Feature Focus: Preference to maintain your workspace when opening projects

[JohnColombo]

Hi everyone,

We are very pleased to announce the addition of a new preference for maintaining your current workspace when opening projects, available in After Effects (Beta) 25.2.0.88. With this new preference enabled, your workspace will no longer be changed when opening a project that was saved with a different workspace.

You'll find this new preference in the General section of the Preferences dialog:

What we would love to hear from you

• Will this be useful in your workflow?
• When might this not be useful in your workflow?
• Would you consider this a "set and forget" preference or something you would toggle often?
• Would you want this preference to be enabled by default?

And, of course, any other feedback you might have is hugely appreciated. Please let us know how this new preference is working for you in the Beta builds!

Thanks again for your feedback.

[Shebbe]

Wow, about time! Very happy to see this.

I consider it a set and forget and would prefer it to be enabled by default. If I'm being real honest I don't think it should even be an option to have the old behavior. Choice is good, but I wonder if anyone was actually happy with it working that way?

[JohnColombo]

Thank you, this is good to know. I'm also unsure if anyone might be relying on the workspace changing when opening a project, but that's why we've got it in Beta. Spread the word and let others know to weigh in!

Cheers,

- John, After Effects Engineering Team 

[Shebbe]

I got a few replies from my team, they want the change but weren't very decisive on my removal point:)

[1suky1]

Finally! I needed this like 5 years ago. 

[Kyle Martinez]

Praise be! This is a super welcomed change! Definitely a "set and forget" preference and 100% it should be enabled by default. Thank you for this!

[sskaz]

This is excellent. I share projects with colleagues often and I never want to use their workspaces. This is definitely a set-and-forget type preference, and should be on by default.

When might this not be useful:

My workspaces are mostly built around different aspect ratio jobs (16×9 vs 9×16 vs ultrawide tradeshow/live event screens) than workflows (animation vs roto vs color correction). If I was bouncing between project files using different workspaces, I guess I would need to manually swap. (Which is not hard. At all.)

Really I want this feature active when opening projects last modified by other users/other machines (a more common occurrence). If there’s a way to determine if a project was last modified by another user (i.e. username, computer/hostname, all files require relinking (which, for my colleagues working out of shared folders, it’s only the start of the file paths that change (me on a Mac vs most of my colleagues on Windows) but the jobcode folder and “downstream” are the same), that’s when I’d want this enabled. But if it’s just me modifying files on the same computer, I’d prefer the current/per-project workspace instead.

[Dan Ebberts]

This is nice. I can't believe it never occurred to me to request this. I open other people's projects all the time and am never comfortable in their workspace. Definitely a set and forget and I would say default to enabled.

[hellopaul4]

A bit off-topic, but is there any chance you could share this bit of code with the Adobe Illustrator team? I hate the way I have to set my workspace (eg. colour of transparency grid, size of layer icons) EVERY time I open someone else's document in Illustrator (which can be many times a day).

[JohnColombo · Accepted solution]

Following up here—this feature was released in the non-Beta version of After Effects in version 25.2 back in April. Full details can be found here: https://helpx.adobe.com/in/after-effects/using/whats-new/2025-2.html#maintain-workspace-when-opening...

Thanks again for your feedback!

- John, After Effects Engineering Team