Feature Focus: Quick Offset: stagger your layers just by dragging them

[Brian C Carter]

Edit: Aug 17, 2025 — Quick Offset is now released in the official release of After Effects 25.4

Great news for After Effects users! Starting with version 25.4. build 50 of After Effects Beta, we're excited to introduce Quick Offset - an efficiency feature that makes staggering your layers and keyframes in your timeline much easier.

What's New 

Quick Offset makes it easy to move each layer in your selection — and keyframes across multiple layers — with just a simple keyboard-modified drag. Just select several layers — or keyframes on different layers — and hold down CMD+OPT on Mac / CTRL+ ALT on PC while you drag your selection in the timeline to watch as your layers (or keyframes) distribute themselves across the timeline under your mouse cursor.  Creating cascading and overlapping animations was much more work than it needed to be, Quick Offset makes it much simpler now. 

What it does: 

Layer offsetting: Select multiple layers in the order you want to offset, hold CMD+OPT (Mac) or CTRL+ALT (PC), and drag left or right to move the last layer selected. All the other selected layers in between will distribute themselves in between in the order that you selected them — that's it! 

The overlay displays useful timing info: "Total Offset" shows the complete duration (in frames or timecode, whichever your comp is displaying) that all selected layers are spread across, while "Per Layer" indicates the specific time interval or gap between each individual layer in the staggered sequence.
Get Creative with Selection Order: Selecting layers in a random order can quickly add interest and variation to your timeline!

Works with keyframes too: Offset keyframe timing while keeping your animations intact. Groups of keyframes on each layer will stick together as you stagger them across the timeline.

• Visual feedback: See exactly how much you're offsetting as you drag.

• Any selection order: Pick layers in whatever order works for your animation.
• Precise timing: Fine-tune beyond whole frames for smoother results.

We Want Your Feedback 

Quick Offset is all about making your daily work a little easier. We'd love to hear how it's working for you: 

• Is it saving you time on staggered animations? 

• What situations are you finding it most useful for? 

• Any ideas for making it even easier to use? 

• Are you satisfied with the way the layers are timed in the composition after using Quick Offset? 

Drop your thoughts in the comments — your feedback helps us make After Effects better!

Known Issues and Feature Limitations 

• Only linear offsets are currently supported, each layer will be offset in time by the same amount. 

• If you marquee a selection of keyframes, the offset order will not consider the direction you selected them; it will just use the layer order in the composition. 

• To make extremely smooth animations, staggered layers and keyframes will start on subframes. 

Try Quick Offset with these other features currently in Beta

Alt/Opt+Drag to Duplicate Layers

Set keyframes on a layer, Alt+Drag on PC / Opt+Drag on Mac to create duplicates all over your comp, then use Quick Offset to stagger them to quickly create a cascade of animations.

Quick Set Anchor to snap anchor points

Select one or more layers, and click the Anchor Point icon in the Properties Panel to reveal a Quick Set Anchor dialog to snap the anchor point to the corner or center point of your layers, or use the shortcut Shift+Tab to bring up the dialog right under your mouse!

We can't wait to hear what you think of Quick Offset!

[ImissWinMovieMaker]

I'm having trouble getting this feature to work. After selecting the order of the layers i want staggered I press ctrl + alt and all the layers move at once. not sure if I'm missing a step. 

Is there a special way to select the layers??

[Brian C Carter]

Hi there! There are no other steps you're missing. It's possible you're using a version that does not include Quick Offset. Can you please check which version of After Effects you're using by clicking About After Effects? On Windows this is in the help menu, on Mac it's in the "After Effects" menu.

This feature is currently only in the Beta version of After Effects, and only after 25.4 build 50. If you don't have the Beta version installed you can download the Beta version from Creative Cloud in the Apps > Beta section. The Beta version and the Release version can both be installed on the same system.

[Austin5FF5]

how about if also from rather just dragging the user could click the layers after invoking the keyboard shortcut and then a dialog winddow would popup asking for values. That way one could specify how many seconds/frames they want to offset. Could. also have offest order and randomness set here. More than anything I think that would vastly improve the random method of selecting layers randomly, espeically if you have a ton of layers. 

[Scott.C.]

This ^^^ add more of the rift funcitonality into some sort of dialog or even an panel. 

[Roland Kahlenberg]

Hi Scott, this isn't meant as a reply directed specifically at you - I'm just too lazy to scroll up. :-DI think lots of great ideas but there is something fundamentally awkward and in fact, wrong to be asking the AE Team to work on low-value tasks - it's like going to a Michelin star restaurant and ordering a Big Mac. 

The AE Team have scientists - literally! We should be asking for Gassian Splatting, AI-Outpainting, built-in Prompting for 3D Assets, Auto-Reframing, AI-Resizing, AI-FrameRate Helper - all the tools you need to stay relevant for the next 5 to 10 years. You/We/aLotOfUs are now competing against Gen-AI and for stuff like Rift/Sortie can be written by an LLM - I can teach you how to prompt for these within 8, 3 hour lessons. But even then, it costs a pittance to purchase them. 

So, it serves you and other users well if you aim big when you put in an FR to the AE Team. Think about what you need not only for the Now but for the next 2-5 years. Speed/Automation and intelligent tools are going to be critical for us; moving forward in this era. 

I'd like to see the 3D Rendering Engine improve its speed for Preview/Renders improve by 5X-20X. It's almost unusable for me - could be my lack of patience but it's also because it's just not sufficiently quick to make 3D a relevant part of my output. 

I'd like to see the AE Team really put heads together with the aim of saving jobs of their users as a main goal - we live in strange and dangerous times. Goals have to be recalibrated, every decision has to be fixed and aim far and wide and BIG. 

[Scott.C.]

I don't disagree with some of what you say, but everyone uses AE very differently for different tasks.

For me, I am first and foremost an animator, and as always deadlines keep getting shorter and more insane, so any native tool to add and manipulate keyframes is always hugely welcome. I also want it to be robust. I don't want to rely on an old script that is no longer maintained or keep having to buy new ones. AI stuff to me I couldn't care less about. Yes a better content aware fill would be welcome, and an even better rotobrush, but I don't do VFX in AE all that often. Every AI tool I've used to this point creates mistakes that I just have to fix later. I'll cross that bridge when if/when it gets there.

I agree that it would behove Adobe not to destroy its subscribing customer base by not destroying our jobs but maybe they don't see it that way. Maybe they just want us to subscribe to AI slop generation a la firefly and others. 

Some other day to day gripes :

Modernizing and speeding up the existing 2.5 3D engine. It still runs on 1996 code and often falls back to a single render thread if you have a lot of layers. Its an absolute DOG and I avoid using the "classic 3D" whenever possible, but it is the fastest way to get a basic parallax effect and sometimes can't be avoided. 

Others:

Improve on vector / shape layer rendering / collapse transform

GPU accelerated camera lens blur fx

Better native glow plujgin 

Variable Type support in the text animator fercryingoutloud

Make shape layers easier to work with, very frustrating to add keyframes to individual shape layers, a lot of twirling and hunting / unintuitive position / anchor points values that are different than the layers main transform controls etc. 

I mean I have a huge laundry list of features  / workflows I would like improved (working with a team in AE is extremely frustrating because there is no library link / project referencing in AE) but I always get the feeling that AE team is very small, even if they have scientists, and features come along at a snails pace and their focus on recreating Element 3D 12+ years later is misguided.  

Ok end rant. Maybe in 10 more years they will give us a better illustrator to AE workflow with type conversion without having to use Overlord. 

[Roland Kahlenberg]

I totally agree with you - well put. THe point I was trying to get across is think BIGGER and nothing wrong with the current toils being a huge PITA. 

THe biggest waste IMO is how the AE Team hasn't kept up with AI tech in terms of the features/tools it provides its users. If you think about it, between AE and PPro which app do you think GenZ would prefer to use for their daily output to Social Media Sites? AE should be the obvious answer and by a long mile!!! And yet, boardroom Adobe (I think) has decided to pump more investment into PPro than AE. 

A separate renderer optimized for video playback and basic editing features and Adobe would have gotten a big share of TikTok fans and alike onto the AE bandwagon. I still recall, last year when the AE team introduced new presets and their principal product manager was harking about an Anime Styled Speed Lines thing - it really blew mind how we got this and more so in this day and age where AI for video is probably one of the top 5 use-cases and here we are, we're supposed to get excited about an Animation Preset that is a niche thing and with already possibly 10 tutorials online and certainly free downloads elsewhere. 

Anyways, every day is a lost opportunity. And this is part of me trying to pitch in - this is a script that allows AE users to animate hundreds of layers and 2K-4K keyframes - I've gone as high as 3200 layers and 10K+keyframes with very good performance. THe trick, for me, is to do everything without having to touch a single keyframe. So, everything's done via the Script UI and input is done via basic English commands - almost like Expressions. 

At Adobe MAX, there are supposed to be video-related announcements - so, hoping something huge and interesting happens.

[arthurb13470043]

You're violating Community guidelines with this aggressive promotion of your paid products.

[Roland Kahlenberg]

I know right!? It's either me being Agressively Passive or Passive Agressive - not easy to find a balance. But it could also be my liking for tiget motif boxers - it rubs on me.  😄