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Sterphy
Sterphy
Known Participant
September 28, 2022
Open for Voting

Folders in After Effects timeline

  • September 28, 2022
  • 113 replies
  • 16397 views
Timeline folders. We have them in Animate, Photoshop, Illustrator... precomps can utterly ruin your work and is NOT an alternatives to having a simple folder hierarchy - especially when dealing with shape layers or anything that requires continual rasterization.

    113 replies

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    J
    jfjuk
    Participating Frequently
    June 11, 2025

    Companies can often hold back on publicising breakthrough features they have yet to launch.  This, however, is NOT a breakthrough feature.  It's the utter lack of recognition that this feature has been requested time and time again, as if it's something so niche that it's irrelevant to most users.  It is certainly NOT irrelevant.

      M
      mr3746448219o4
      Known Participant
      June 11, 2025

      What are you Adobe? A secret society that hides its plans from the public? Come on, lots of software companies do upcoming feature lists the are working on. You are not a secret society, you are a public company.

      What are you fighting with? You are a biltiondollar company that could do such feature in no time. Why do we have to ask so many times for such useful and requested feature?

        DaciaSaenz
        Community Manager
        DaciaSaenzCommunity Manager
        Community Manager
        June 11, 2025

        Y'all... we all want folders. We have your requests. And we have no new news. And if we did have news, we wouldn't be able to share it until the feature was public. 

        @Sterphy, what do you want us to respond in the meantime?  A lot of the people in this thread responding to you are individual contributors on this team. We're doing our best to advocate for features that we know users want, including folders in the timeline. 


        The fight continues. 

         

        - Dacia Saenz, AE & PR Engineering Teams
          Sterphy
          SterphyAuthor
          Known Participant
          June 10, 2025

          I wonder if he'll reply this decade 

          Sterphy
          SterphyAuthor
          Known Participant
          June 10, 2025

          It's no wonder their rating is 1.2* out of 5 on Trustpilot! 

          Sterphy
          SterphyAuthor
          Known Participant
          May 30, 2025

          Incredible that Adobe staff can't even bring themselves to even respond to this. 

            S
            smanole
            Participant
            March 14, 2025

            @llealloo it was @Sterphy simulation from 2022. We might not have groups for timeline layers but at least we have thread grouping in Adobe Community :))

              llealloo
              llealloo
              Known Participant
              March 14, 2025

              @JohnColombo17100380thanks for merging the topics together!

               

              Any chance you could speak with your team about this feature request and let us know what they say? i.e. How feasible is this from a software engineering standpoint? I am curious to know, because if it is too hard I would like to stop asking about it. It would be nice to hear something/anything from the team at Adobe, because we have been asking for this for over 10 years with no response. Appreciate anything you can do to inform us of the vibe over there!

               

              Warm regards,

              Leah - 21 year AE expression & scripting expert, 18 years professional experience in motion graphics

                llealloo
                llealloo
                Known Participant
                March 14, 2025

                We are even pulling out the OG fonts (nice one @smanole with the Bank Gothic) to help get the point across. Let's keep it going folks!

                  S
                  smanole
                  Participant
                  March 14, 2025

                  Hi Adobe Team,

                  I wanted to bring up a life-saving feature that I believe would greatly improve the workflow in After Effects: layer grouping. Currently, the only way to organize multiple layers is by pre-composing them. However, once layers are pre-comped, all editing is confined to the precomp, making it difficult to adjust them later in the main composition. This is especially challenging for large, complex projects where you might want to maintain a higher level of flexibility.

                  In comparison, other Adobe tools like Photoshop and Illustrator have implemented the ability to group layers, making it easier to manage elements without losing direct control over the layers themselves. After Effects could benefit from this functionality as well, providing a better way to organize and manipulate layers without resorting to cumbersome precompositions.

                  I’m aware that this topic has been raised by multiple users in the past, but it’s still not available. I hope that Adobe will consider adding this feature in a future update, as it would significantly enhance the usability and efficiency of the software.

                  Thank you for considering this suggestion!

                  Best regards,

                  Stefan

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