After Effect custom workspace keeps rearranging itself...why?!

[justinh94338808]

Hi,

I have a custom workspace set up in AE. However, every time my project autosaves and sometimes when I import new assets all the panels resize, some crush up to one side, some spread wide in the middle. On some occasions, panels will even disappear.

It used to be that I could reset to saved workspace and it would correct itself - though this is tedious when I have to do it after every autosave - but since the CC2018 update, this no longer works. It seems like AE isn't saving my layout but is saving this squashed and stretched layout instead and I can't overwrite it.

I have also saved it under new names and that doesn't work.

It's beginning to drive me mad, not to mention interfering with my workflow.

Any help is gratefully received.

Thanks

[Brendan25620801v6kw]

Just started happening to me after I upgraded to AE 2024 on a Mac running Ventura 13.4.1. During the session as I move between different precomps, my workspace spontaneously changes itself. Extremely disruptive to my workflow. Fix it, Adobe. Now.

[Nosidda89]

2025, and still an issue. Why is this still not resolved? Even when having a KB shortcut to reset my workspace to saved settings, it still doesn't reset to the changes that I had set up. I will literally set my workspace exactly as I want it, save the changes, and then do a reset to test and see if it stays the same. It does not stay the same, it keeps making Animation Composer previews massive (far bigger than they need to be), and shrinking both the main preview and the right side panel. Animation Composer ends up taking up over 1/3 of the upper half. I always have to manually resize it down, and resize the right side panel up.

Why is my workspace reset changing anything? It's supposed to reset the workspace back to exactly the way I had it saved.

Fix this!!!

[Quensyne]

I think I've found the solution. Certain windows in After Effects behave like this: if they have more space than their default size, they reset their scale to the default size, and this changes the size of other windows. This happens only with certain windows; for example, it's not the case with the handy script window. I found that the Audio, Align and Project panels behave like this, and perhaps if we do more testing, we could find other windows that behave similarly.
I worked around this issue by unlocking the panels that weren't working and leaving them as standalone windows. After restarting AE, everything works fine. However, this creates an empty space where the panels used to be, and other windows take up that space. To fix this, I asked ChatGPT to write a script with a UI for an empty, resizable window, and I placed it in the empty space. Then, I positioned my Project window above it. Although this window isn't locked, and I might accidentally close or move it, it would be nice if Adobe added a feature to lock standalone windows.
Version of After Effects: 24.0. Sorry for the poor quality of the screenshots.

[Quensyne]

With new tests, I found another workaround: I simply place my empty window (or any other correct window) next to the window that changes its size, select it before closing After Effects, and then it works. I need to select the window that works well next to the one that changes size, and after restarting, for some reason, After Effects picks the window that changes size (in my case, it's the Project window), but it doesn’t change size at all.
However, with this method, before closing AE, I need to select another window in the group, or else the layout will break after a restart. I think the same issue will occur after a crash as well.