General user interface items

The Tools panel can be displayed as a toolbar across the top of the application window or as a normal, dockable panel.

• Select the button for the tool. If the button has a small triangle at its lower-right corner, hold down the mouse button to view the hidden tools. Then, select the tool you want to activate.

• Press the keyboard shortcut for the tool. (Placing the pointer over a tool button displays a tool tip with the name and keyboard shortcut for the tool.)

• To cycle through hidden tools within a tool category, repeatedly press the keyboard shortcut for the tool category. (For example, press the Q key repeatedly to cycle through the pen tools.)

• To momentarily activate a tool, hold down the key for the desired tool; release the key to return to the previously active tool. (This technique does not work with all tools.)

• To momentarily activate the Hand tool, hold down the spacebar, the H key, or the middle mouse button. (The middle mouse button does not activate the Hand tool under a few circumstances, including when the Unified Camera tool is active.)

To show or hide panels most relevant to the active tool, select the panel button if available. For example, clicking this button when a paint tool is active opens or closes the Paint and Brushes panels. Select the Auto-Open Panels option in the Tools panel to automatically open the relevant panels when certain tools are activated.

Open panel, viewer, and context menus

Panel menus provide commands relative to the active panel or frame. Viewer menus provide lists of compositions, layers, or footage items that can be shown in the viewer, as well as commands for closing items and locking the viewer. Context menus provide commands relative to the item that is context-clicked. Many items in the After Effects user interface have associated context menus. Using context menus can make your work faster and easier.

• To open a panel menu, select the button   menu in the upper-right corner of the panel.
• To open a viewer menu, select the name of the active composition, layer, or footage item in the viewer tab.
• To open a context menu, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (macOS). This action is sometimes referred to as context-clicking.

Columns

The Project, Timeline, and Render Queue panels contain columns.

• To show or hide columns, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (macOS) a column heading (or choose Columns from the panel menu), and select the columns that you want to show or hide. A check mark indicates that the column is shown.

• To reorder columns, select a column name and drag it to a new location.

• To resize columns, drag the bar next to a column name. Some columns cannot be resized.

• To sort footage items in the Project panel, select the column heading. Select once more to sort them in reverse order.

Search and filter in the Timeline, Project, and Effects & Presets panels

The Project, Timeline, and Effects & Presets panels each contain search fields that you can use to filter items in the panel.

• To place the insertion point in a search field, select in the search field.

• To place the insertion point in the search field for the active panel, choose File > Find or press Ctrl+F (Windows) or Command+F (macOS).

When you type in the search field, the list of items in the panel is filtered, showing some items and hiding others. Only items with entries that match the search query that you’ve typed are shown. The folders, layers, categories, or property groups that contain the matched items are also shown to provide context.

In general, only text in columns that are shown is searched for this filtering operation. For example, you may need to show the Comments column to search and filter by the contents of comments. 

If one or more layers are selected in a composition, the filtering operation in the Timeline panel only affects selected layers. In this case, unselected layers are not filtered out (hidden) if they don’t match the search query. However, if no layers are selected in the composition, the filtering operation applies to all layers in the composition. This behavior matches that for showing and hiding layer properties by pressing their property shortcut keys.

If the text that you type in the search field in the Project or Timeline panel contains spaces, the spaces are treated as and-based operators. For example, typing Dark Solid matches footage items or layers named Dark Red Solid and Dark Gray Solid. In the Effects & Presets panel, spaces are treated as space characters in the search field. For example, typing Change Color matches the Change Color effect, but not the Change To Color effect.

Project, Timeline, and Effects & Presets panels accept or-based searching. In an or-based search, a comma denotes an or, with and-based operators taking precedence over or-based ones. For example, sometimes the name of the property that determines the amount for a blur effect is Amount, sometimes it is Blurriness, and sometimes it is Blur Radius. If you search for Amount, Blurriness, and Radius, then you'll see the equivalent values for all of your blur effects.

When you type in a search field, recent search strings that match your input appear.

This search method also allows a way to save items you use often via a menu that opens when you select the search icon in the search field. The search menu consists of two lists separated by a divider. The top list contains the six most recent searches, with the most recent one at the top. The bottom list contains saved search items. As you type, the top list filters to show matching terms.

• To save a search item, Shift-click it in the top list of the search menu. Up to 10 items may be saved.

• To delete a saved search item from either list, hover the mouse over the item to highlight it, and then press Delete or Backspace.

Examples of searches in the Project panel

• To show only footage items for which the name or comment contains a specific string, start typing the string.

• To show only footage items for which the source file is missing, type the entire word missing. (This search works whether or not the File Path column is shown, which is an exception to the general rule that only shown columns are searched.)

• To show only unused footage items, type the entire word unused.

• To show only used footage items, type the entire word used.

• To show only Cineon footage items, type Cineon with the Type column shown.

Examples of searches in the Timeline panel

• To show only layers and properties for which the name or comment contains a specific string, type the string. For example, type starch to show pins created by the Puppet Starch tool.

• To show only properties that have an expression that uses a specific method, type the method name.

• To show only layers with a specific label, type the label name. Learn more about working with color labels for layers, compositions, and footage items in After Effects.

Scroll or zoom with the mouse wheel

You can use the mouse wheel to zoom in the Timeline, Composition, Layer, and Footage panels. You can use the mouse wheel to scroll in the Timeline, Project, Render Queue, Flowchart, Effect Controls, Metadata, and Effects & Presets panels.

• To zoom into the center of the panel or the feature region when tracking, roll the mouse wheel forward.
• To zoom out of the center of the panel or out of the feature region when tracking, roll the mouse wheel backward.
• To zoom into the area under the pointer, hold Alt (Windows) or Option (macOS) down as you roll the mouse wheel forward. In the Timeline, Footage, and Layer panels, this action zooms in time when the pointer is over the time navigator or time ruler.
• To zoom out of the area under the pointer, hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (macOS) as you roll the mouse wheel backward. In the Timeline, Footage, and Layer panels, this action zooms in time when the pointer is over the time navigator or time ruler.
• To scroll vertically, roll the mouse wheel forward or backward.
• To scroll horizontally, hold down Shift as you roll the mouse wheel backward or forward. In the Timeline, Footage, and Layer panels, Shift-rolling backward moves forward in time and vice versa when the pointer is over the time navigator or time ruler.

Undo changes

You can undo only those actions that alter the project data. For example, you can undo a change to a property value, but you cannot undo the scrolling of a panel or the activation of a tool.

You can sequentially undo as many as 99 of the most recent changes made to the project.  

• To undo the most recent change, choose Edit > Undo [action] or Ctrl + Z.
  
• To undo a change and all changes after it, choose Edit > History and select the first change that you want to undo.
• To revert to the last saved version of the project, choose File > Revert. All changes made and footage items imported since you last saved are lost. You cannot undo this action.

After Effects user interface tips

• Use ClearType text anti-aliasing on Windows. ClearType makes the outlines of system text, such as menus and dialog boxes, easier to read. See Windows Help for information on how to enable ClearType text anti-aliasing.

• To show tooltips, select the Show Tool Tips preference (Edit > General > Preferences (Windows) or After Effects > Preferences > General (macOS).

• Use a workspace that contains the Info panel, and leave that panel in front of other panels in its panel group whenever possible. The Info panel shows messages about what After Effects is doing, information about items under the pointer, and much more.

• Use context menus.

• Use keyboard shortcuts.