Feature Request: Smooth Frame-by-Frame Navigation with Playhead Movement and Onion Skinning

Hello Adobe Animate Team,

Thank you for the continuous improvements to Animate!

I’d like to suggest a feature to speed up the frame-by-frame animation workflow. Currently, when pressing the “next frame” key (right arrow or >), the playhead (blue vertical line) does not move forward unless a keyframe exists or is created by drawing or pressing F7. This means animators must manually create keyframes before moving forward.

It would be very helpful if Animate allowed the playhead to move forward freely on the timeline when pressing the next frame key, even if no keyframe exists yet, while still showing the previous frame through onion skinning.

This way, animators could smoothly navigate frame-by-frame, seeing their previous drawings and choosing exactly where to start the next keyframe. Once they start drawing, a keyframe would be created automatically thanks to auto-keyframe.

This feature, similar to how Toon Boom Harmony works, would greatly improve workflow speed and creative flow for traditional animators using Animate.

Thank you for considering this idea!