Preferences

On this page:

To open the Preferences dialog box, go to:

• Windows: Edit > Preferences > [category name]
  
• macOS: After Effects > Settings > [category name]

Use the following keyboard shortcuts to open the Preferences > General menu:

• Windows: Ctrl + Alt + ; (semicolon) 
• macOS: Command + Option + ; (semicolon)

Reset preferences

Restore the default Preference settings

To restore the default preference settings, press and hold the following keys while the application is starting.

• Windows: Ctrl + Alt + Shift
• macOS: Command + Option + Shift

Restore default Keyboard Shortcuts

To restore the default keyboard shortcuts, press and hold the following keys while clicking the OK button in the dialog box.

• Windows: Alt + Click
• macOS: Option + Click

Reset background preferences

To reset background preferences, follow these steps:

macOS

Windows

Reveal preferences

Preferences, including keyboard shortcuts and workspaces, are stored as files in the following locations:

• Windows: \Users\[user_name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\After Effects\[version]
• macOS: /Users/[user_name]/Library/Preferences/Adobe/After Effects/[version]

To reveal the preferences in After Effects, go to:

• Windows: Edit > Preferences > Startup & Repair and select the Reveal Preferences in Explorer button
• macOS: After Effects > Settings > Startup & Repair and select the Reveal Preferences in Finder button

Startup & Repair preferences

The Startup & Repair panel manages application startup behavior and troubleshooting tools.

Startup Options

• Enable Home Screen: Displays the welcome screen when After Effects launches. It is automatically enabled, and it cannot be disabled for trial versions of the app.
• Show System Compatibility Issues: Shows alerts about hardware and software compatibility as a System Compatibility Report during After Effects startup, including identified issues and recommended solutions.

Repair Options

• Start in Safe Mode: Temporarily restarts After Effects with third-party plugins and extensions disabled for troubleshooting. If restarting After Effects in Safe Mode resolves the issue, it indicates that your current preferences are corrupt and need to be reset or replaced, or an installed plugin is unstable.
• Empty All Caches: Clears disk cache, media cache, and database cache. Emptying all caches can clear up additional storage space and can resolve certain startup issues.

Preference Management

• Reveal Preferences in Finder: Opens the folder containing After Effects preferences files for manual backup or inspection.

• Reset All Preferences To Defaults: Resets all preferences, workspaces, and debug database to factory defaults. Requires application restart.

• Migrate Previous Version Preferences: Restores preferences from the previous After Effects version. You will be prompted to migrate settings from a previous version if After Effects finds a preference folder from a previous version and no preference folder for the current version. This occurs when you start After Effects for the first time and when you delete the entire preferences folder.

File Bug Report

• File Bug Report: Opens the bug reporting interface to submit issues to Adobe.

Project preferences

The Project panel options manage default project settings and control auto-save behaviors.

Project Options

• Maintain Current Workspace When Opening Projects: Prevents projects from changing your current workspace layout when opened and ensures that After Effects maintains your workspace even if the project was saved with a different layout.
• Dynamic Link with After Effects Uses Project File Name with Highest Number: Allows Dynamic Link to work with projects from different After Effects versions.

New Project

You can create a template with your preferred project settings, such as color management and folder structure, and use it as a foundation for every new project you create. 

• New Project loads template: Uses a specified project file as a template for all new projects. If enabled and a template project is chosen, the New Project command allows you to open a project based on a template. The template project can be an After Effects template project file (.aet), an After Effects project file (.aep), or an After Effects XML project file (.aepx).  
• Choose Project Template: Select which project file (.aep, .aepx, or .aet) to use as the new project template.

Solids Folder

• New Project Solids Folder: Sets the default folder name where new solid layers are organized. The current project's solid folder name is displayed for reference.

Auto-Save

Use the options under the Auto-Save section to automatically save a copy of your project while you work. You can set the frequency of how often After Effects saves your work, and also the number of copies of the project it saves.

• Save every: Sets the time interval (in minutes) after which the project gets automatically saved.
• Save when starting render queue: Automatically saves projects when render queue items are added or modified. 
• Maximum Project Versions: Maximum number of auto-save versions to keep. Older versions are automatically deleted. For example, if you type 5, After Effects saves five versions of each project you open.

Auto-Save Location

• Next to Project: Creates a folder in the project’s directory and stores auto-save files alongside the original project file.
• Custom Location: Saves auto-save files to a specified location.

Composition preferences

The options in the Composition panel control composition creation defaults and layer behaviors.

Composition Options

• Center Anchor Point in New Shape Layers: Automatically centers the anchor point when creating shape layers.
• Create Layers at Composition Start Time: New layers begin at the current time indicator position, rather than at the composition start.
• Create Split Layers Above Original Layer: When splitting layers, the new layer appears above (later in the timeline) rather than below.
• Default Spatial Interpolation to Linear: Applies linear spatial interpolation to keyframes by default instead of Bezier.
• Default Position Properties to Separated Dimensions: Splits the Position property into separate X, Y, and Z properties automatically.
• Pen Tool Shortcut Toggles Between Pen and Mask Feather Tools: Limits the G shortcut to toggle only between Pen and Mask Feather tools, not all pen-related tools.
• Preserve Constant Vertex and Feather Point Count when Editing Masks: Maintains consistent mask structure when animating using Smart Mask Interpolation.
• Show Bounding Boxes for Layers Within Pre-Comps: Shows bounding box wireframes for components of collapsed precompositions and per-character 3D text layers.
• Switches Affect Nested Comps: Quality, effects, frame blending, and motion blur switches affect nested compositions recursively.
• Synchronize Time of All Related Items: Moves the time indicator in one viewer to update it in all related viewers.
• Use System Shortcut Keys: Enables macOS system shortcuts (Command+H to hide, Command+M to minimize) instead of After Effects shortcuts. Use the Control key to access the other set of shortcuts. Available only for macOS devices.

Opening Layers with Double-click

• On Footage Layer Opens: Choose whether double-clicking opens the Layer panel or source footage.
• On Comp Layer Opens: Choose whether double-clicking opens the Layer panel or nested composition.
• Open Layer Panel when Double-clicking with Paint, Roto Brush, and Refine Edge Tools: Choose whether double-clicking a precomposition layer with a Paint tool, Roto Brush, or Refine Edge tool active opens the layer in the Layer panel. 

Synthetic Layers

• Length of Composition: Synthetic layers, such as color solids, text, and shapes, utilize the full composition duration.
• Use Custom Duration: Synthetic layers use a specified duration (in frames or time).

Previews preferences

The options in the Previews panel control real-time preview behavior and performance optimization.

Adaptive Resolution

• Adaptive Resolution Priority: Controls how After Effects balances resolution and quality during interactive update previews (while dragging, scrubbing, etc.). Use the slider to adjust the minimum resolution. Lower values allow more aggressive down-sampling. 
• 3D Renderer Reduces: Select between the following two options for the 3D renderer during interactive previews:
  • Resolution & Quality: Reduces both resolution and 3D render quality.
  • Only Render Quality: Maintains resolution, only reduces 3D render quality.

Viewer Quality

• Zoom Quality: Defines how After Effects manages zoom behavior in the Composition panel.
  • Faster: Prioritizes speed over precision.
  • More Accurate Except Cached Preview: After Effects tries to maintain higher accuracy when zooming, except if you’re viewing a cached preview (RAM Preview).
  • More Accurate: Always prioritizes precision.
• Color Management Quality:
  • Faster: Uses simplified color calculations for better performance during interaction.
  • More Accurate Except Cached Preview: Balances speed and accuracy. Cached frames may use simplified color transforms during playback, but static frames are accurate.
  • More Accurate: Applies full color management calculations for precise color representation

Composition Switches

• Automatically Enable Frame Blending and Motion Blur Rendering: When you enable this feature, whenever you apply a motion blur or frame blending on a layer, it automatically gets enabled for the composition preview rendering as well.

Audio

• Mute Audio When Preview Is Not Real-time: Choose whether to play audio during previews when the frame rate is slower than real-time. When the frame rate is slower than real-time, audio will stutter to maintain sync. Enabling this function prevents audio stuttering by muting audio when the preview frame rate drops below real-time.

Cache Frames When Idle

• Idle Delay Before Caching Starts: Set the time, in seconds, that After Effects waits before starting background cache rendering.
• Cache Frames: Specify which frames to cache in the background:
  • From Current Time: Frames start caching from the beginning of where the CTI is positioned.
  • Around Current Time: Frames start caching around the CTI (one frame before and one frame after).
  • From Start of Range: Frames start caching from the beginning of the set Cache Range.
• Cache Range: Specify the range of frames to cache:
  • Work Area: After Effects caches all frames inside the work area.
  • Work Area Extended by Current Time: Caches frames beginning from where the CTI is positioned, till the end of the work area. 
  • Entire Duration: Caches frames in the entire duration of the comp.

Magnification

• Type: Adjust settings for zoom type, behaviour, and trackpad scrolling.
  • Legacy - Traditional zoom with fixed increments, which provides fixed incremental magnification with predefined zoom levels (such as 33%, 50%, 100%, and 200%).
  • Smooth - Modern zoom with continuous scaling, allowing continuous zooming in and out to any level you need.
• Behavior: Set magnification based on the cursor's current position or set it to always zoom to the center of the panel. 
  • Centered:  Zooms in and out around the center of the panel, regardless of where the cursor is located.
  • Follow Cursor: Zooms in and out around the cursor’s current position, keeping the area under the cursor in focus.
• Trackpad Scrolling: Set trackpad scrolling to either zoom or pan, enabling two-finger drags to move the viewer, similar to the Hand   tool. Available when the Type is set to Smooth.
  • Zooms: Scroll wheel zooms in or out.
  • Pans: Scroll wheel pans the viewer.

Appearance preferences

The options in the Appearance panel control the visual appearance of the After Effects interface.

Appearance Options

• Path Point and Handle Size: Specify the size of Bezier direction handles and vertices for masks and shapes, direction handles for motion paths, and other similar controls.
• Hardware Accelerate Composition, Layer, And Footage Panels: Use GPU acceleration for faster display. 
• Use System Color Picker: Use the operating system's native color picker instead of Adobe's custom color picker. 
• Show Rendering Progress in Info Panel: Display render progress in the Info panel. 
• Disable Thumbnails in Project Panel: Stop rendering thumbnails to improve performance with large projects. 
• Show Both Timecode and Frames in Timeline Panel: Show both timecode and frame numbers in time displays. 
• Show Tool Tips: Enable After Effects to display helpful tooltips when hovering over UI elements. 
• Show Coach Marks: Enable notifications when you select certain parts of the UI, After Effects suggests new features, introduces you to changed functionality, and offers tips to improve your workflow.
  • Reset Coach Marks: Resets the list of coach marks that have been seen, showing them again.

Theme

• Color Theme: Set the theme color for the After Effects app, which affects the color of the background, text, icons, and standard controls. There are three themes to select from, each promoting readability and accessibility by utilizing high-contrast color combinations for text and background elements.
  
  • Darkest: The color theme primarily utilizes the darkest tone, with contrasting text and icon colors.
    
  • Dark: The color theme primarily features a dark gray tone, with contrasting text and icon colors.
    
  • Light: The color theme primarily features a lightest gray tone, with contrasting text and icon colors.
• Accessible color contrast: Enable this feature to activate a lower-contrast variation of the themes, which reduces the contrast of elements such as buttons, icons, menus, and text, making them more visible and accessible.

Colors

• Use Label Color for Layer Handles and Paths: Apply layer label colors to mask paths and bezier handles. 
• Use Label Color for Related Tabs: Apply item label colors to viewer tabs.
• Cycle Mask Colors (uses label colors): Automatically assign different colors to each new mask.
  • Use Contrasting Color for Mask Path: Use high-contrast colors for mask paths against the composition background.
• Use Gradients: Enable gradient shaders in the user interface for a more polished appearance.

Motion Path

• No Motion Path: Hide keyframes on motion paths.
• All Keyframes: Display all keyframes along motion paths.
• No More Than: Display the specified number of keyframes before and after the current time.
• Show Keyframes for Duration: Display keyframes within a specified time duration before and after the current time.

Grids & Guides preferences

The Grids & Guides panel controls the appearance of grids, guides, and safe margins. The feature within these preferences allows you to configure grid settings for precise alignment and positioning of elements in your composition.

Grid

• Grid Color: Use the color picker or eyedropper to choose a color for the gridlines.
• Grid Style: Choose whether you want the grid to appear as lines, dashed, or dotted lines.
• Gridline every: Set the spacing for the gridlines in pixels.
• Subdivisions: Define the number of subdivisions between each gridline.

Proportional Grid

The Proportional Grid allows you to align and position elements in your composition with greater precision. The Horizontal and Vertical values you set determine the number of divisions in the grid, which in turn affects the spacing and layout of the grid lines.

• Horizontal: Set the intervals at which horizontal grid lines appear, which will help you align elements along the width of your composition.
• Vertical: Set the intervals for vertical grid lines, which will help you position elements along the height of your composition.

Guides

The Guides feature allows you to create non-printing lines that help you align and position composition elements. It enables precise alignment of elements within your composition, allowing you to place and adjust them swiftly without needing constant measuring and realignment.

• Color: Use the color picker or eyedropper to choose a color for the guidelines.
• Style: Choose whether the guides appear as lines or dashed guidelines.

Safe Margins

The options in the Safe Margins section help ensure that your content is properly positioned within the visible area of your composition and displayed correctly across various screens. 

• Action Safe: Set the margin that indicates where important actions or elements should remain visible on various screens and formats.
• Title Safe: Set the margin that indicates the area where essential text and graphics should be placed to prevent them from being cut off during cropping.
• Center-Cut Action Safe: Specify a safe space that indicates the portion of the frame likely to be visible across different aspect ratios, especially when content is displayed on various screens.
• Center-Cut Title Safe: Specify a safe that indicates the area where important text and graphics should be placed to ensure they remain visible across various aspect ratios and formats.

Transparency settings

Adjusting the size and colors of the transparency grid behind your composition elements can enhance visibility by providing better contrast against various elements. This makes it easier to distinguish transparent areas from the rest of your design. Additionally, customizing the grid colors to match your personal preferences or project requirements can make your workspace more comfortable and efficient.

• Grid size: Set the grid size and specify the dimensions of the individual squares that make up the transparency grid. 
• Grid colors: Specify the colors used for the checkerboard pattern of the transparency grid. By default, After Effects uses a light gray and white pattern, but you can customize these colors to suit your needs.
  
• Color 1: First checkerboard color (when Custom is selected).
• Color 2: Second checkerboard color (when Custom is selected).

Learn more about working with safe zones, grids, guides, and rulers.

Labels preferences

You can use labels (colored boxes in the Label column) in the Project and Timeline panel to organize and manage compositions, footage items, layers, and keyframes. By default, different label colors indicate different kinds of footage items, but you can assign label colors to indicate whatever categories you choose.

While assigning label colors to categories, you can also use the label color menu swatches to quickly identify the color you'd like to set your project items, keyframes, layers, or composition marker labels.

• Label Defaults: Automatically assigns labels to new items based on type:
  • Composition: Default label for new compositions.
  • Video: Default label for imported video files.
  • Audio: Default label for imported audio files.
  • Still: Default label for imported still images.
  • Folder: Default label for new folders in the Project panel.
  • Solid: Default label for new solid layers.
  • Camera: Default label for new camera layers.
  • Light: Default label for new light layers.
  • Adjustment: Default label for new adjustment layers.
  • Null Object: Default label for new null objects.
  • Shape: Default label for new shape layers.
  • Text: Default label for new text layers.
  • 3D Models: Default label for new 3D layers.
  • Other 3D: Default label for other 3D-related layers.
• Label Colors: For each of the 16 available labels:
  • Label Name: Enter a custom name for the label that will appear in menus and throughout the UI.
  • Label Color: Choose a custom color for the label.

Type preferences

The Type panel controls typography and font-related preferences.

Font Menu

You can use this section to set preferences for the font size or the number of recent fonts for After Effects to display.

• Preview Size: Adjust the font preview size in the Character panel font menu.
• Number of Recent Fonts to Display: Change the number of recent fonts to display at the top of the menu.

Resolve Fonts Dialog

• Do not warn me about missing fonts when opening projects: Suppress the missing font warning dialog when opening projects with missing fonts.

Import preferences

The Import panel controls how footage and assets are imported into After Effects.

Import Defaults

• Indeterminate Media NSTC: Select drop frame or non drop frame timecode for Indeterminate Media NTSC, which applies to imports like still image sequences in which timecode values are not present or are unknown.
  • Use Dropframe: This assumes NTSC footage uses drop frame timecode.
  • Use Non-Dropframe: This assumes NTSC footage uses non drop frame timecode.

• Interpret Unlabeled Alpha As: Set controls on how the After Effects should handle imported footage that contains an alpha channel but doesn’t have metadata identifying what type of alpha it uses.
  • Ask User: After Effects asks you each time you import footage with an unlabeled alpha channel, so you can choose how to interpret it. 
  • Guess: After Effects tries to automatically determine whether the alpha is straight or premultiplied. If it’s not certain, it will prompt you or make a best guess. 
  • Ignore Alpha: After Effects ignores the alpha channel and treats the footage as fully opaque (no transparency). 
  • Straight (Unmatted): Treats the alpha as straight, and transparency is applied only to the alpha channel. 
  • Premultiplied (Matted with Black): Treats the alpha as premultiplied with a black background. 
  • Premultiplied (Matted with White): Treats the alpha as premultiplied with a white background. 

• Drag Import Multiple Items As: Control what After Effects creates when you drag multiple files into a composition.
  • Footage: Create a footage layer.
  • Composition: Create a composition from footage.
  • Composition - Retain Layer Sizes: Create a composition preserving layer dimensions.

Footage Interpretation on Replacement: Specify when replacing footage in a project:

• Reset: Reset all interpretation settings to defaults for the new footage.
• Remember: Maintain frame rate, alpha interpretation, and other settings from the replaced footage.

Still Footage

• Use Composition Length: Extend still images (JPEG, PNG, TIFF, PSD, etc.) to match the full duration of the composition.
  
• Use Custom Duration: Assign still images a fixed, user-defined duration (in frames or time).

Sequence Footage

• Frames Per Second: Frame rate applied to imported image sequences.
• Report Missing Frames: Alerts you when image sequences have gaps or missing files.
• Verify Individual Files: Checks each file in a sequence. It can be slower, but a more thorough validation.

Video Footage

• Enable hardware accelerated decoding: Uses GPU acceleration for faster H.264 video decoding (when hardware supports it).

Automatic Footage Reloading

Footage that has changed is automatically reloaded when switching back from another application. By default, footage other than the image sequence is automatically reloaded. You can change this behavior by using the Auto Reload drop-down.

• All Footage Types: Includes even the image sequence footage.
• Non-sequence Footage: Includes footage other than the image sequence.
  
• Off: Turn off auto-reloading of footage.

Export preferences

The Export panel controls render queue and export behavior.

Export Defaults

• Use Default File Name and Folder: Automatically generate reasonable output file names based on composition names.
• Preview output during render queue output: Show composition output in a viewer while exporting (via Mercury Transmit).
• Play Sound When Render Finishes: Play an audio notification when renders finish.
• Enable ProRes hardware accelerated encoding, if available: Use GPU acceleration for ProRes export (when hardware supports it). Requires application restart when changed.

Segment Output

• Segment Sequences At: Create new folders automatically when rendering image sequences that exceed a specified number of files. Set the maximum number of files per folder, after which After Effects creates a new subfolder.
• Segment Video-only Movie Files At: Split large video-only movie files automatically into smaller segments. Set the maximum file size (in MB) for each movie segment.

Render Notifications

• Automatically enable notifications when you add a composition to the Render Queue: Automatically configure render notifications based on render duration and Creative Cloud notification settings. When enabled, After Effects sends notifications to Creative Cloud desktop and mobile apps when you add a composition to the Render Queue.

Audio preferences

The Audio panel controls audio hardware configuration and playback settings.

Audio Hardware

• Device Class: Select the audio interface type or driver that After Effects should use: 
  • Built-in Audio
  • Third-party Audio Interfaces
  • ASIO Drivers (Windows)
  • Core Audio Devices (macOS)
• Default Input: Input device for audio recording.
• Default Output: Output device for audio playback.
• I/O Buffer Size: Adjust the audio buffer size to strike a balance between latency and stability. Choose the lowest value that avoids audio dropouts. The optimal setting depends on your system speed, so some experimentation may be required.
• Sample Rate: Select an audio sample rate (44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, 96 kHz, etc.) for the audio hardware. Browse through some common rates for different output mediums in Adobe Audition Help.

Output Channel Mapping

Map After Effects’ stereo output to specific hardware channels:

• Left Channel: Assign the hardware output channel for left audio.
• Right Channel: Assign the hardware output channel for right audio.

Export

• Audio Block Duration: Audio is also rendered in segments, the length of which is set by the Audio Block Duration value. Set the length of audio chunks processed during playback and rendering. Smaller values improve responsiveness but reduce efficiency, while larger values increase efficiency but decrease responsiveness.

Disk preferences

The Disk panel manages disk cache, media cache, and database settings.

Disk cache

• Enable Disk Cache: Disk Cache is enabled by default. You can enable or disable disk caching and also select a folder to contain your cache. If enabled, it allows After Effects to cache rendered frames to disk for faster playback.
• Maximum Disk Cache Size: Set the maximum space allocated for disk cache.
  • Choose Folder: Select where disk cache files are stored.
  • Empty Disk Cache: Manually clear all disk cache files.
• Enable Preview from Disk Cache: Allow RAM previews to be played directly from disk cache when RAM is full.
• Enable Compressed Frames (Lossless): Use lossless compression to reduce disk cache size. Enable it to preview longer segments of your timeline while using significantly less disk space, without compromising visual quality.

Conformed Media Cache

Select folders or change the location of the media cache database or the media cache itself.

• Database: Select where After Effects stores index entries for conformed media, allowing After Effects to quickly locate and manage cached audio and video data.
• Cache: Select where imported media cache files are stored (used by Adobe Media Encoder and Premiere).
• Clean Database & Cache: Remove conformed and indexed media files from the cache and delete their corresponding entries from the database. This process only affects files linked to footage whose original source files are no longer available.

XMP Metadata

• Write XMP IDs to Files on Import: Writes an XMP ID to imported files and embeds unique identifiers in the metadata of imported footage. This improves the sharing and reuse of media cache files and previews.
• Create Layer Markers from Footage XMP Metadata: When you create a layer from a footage item that contains XMP metadata, After Effects automatically converts that metadata into layer markers.

Memory & CPU preferences

The Memory & CPU preferences panel controls memory allocation and multi-frame rendering. The options in this panel allow you to set memory preferences and specify how After Effects allocates and uses memory and CPUs.

Memory

• RAM reserved for other applications: Increase or decrease the value to specify how much available RAM After Effects can use and how much for applications you're running in the background.
• RAM available for: Displays how much RAM is available for After Effects and other Creative Cloud apps.
• Show Memory Usage Details: Launch the Memory Details dialog, which displays detailed memory allocation information showing how memory is distributed.
• GPU Information: Open a dialog that displays GPU capabilities, driver version, and supported OpenGL features.

CPU

• Enable Multi-Frame Rendering: Multi-Frame Rendering allows After Effects to render multiple frames at the same time during preview and render queue export. This setting also applies when After Effects compositions are rendered from Media Encoder and Premiere.
• % CPU reserved for other applications: Select to limit how much CPU power to reserve so that other applications, other than After Effects, can still be used.

Video preferences

The Video panel controls Mercury Transmit (video output to external monitors) settings.

Video Options

• Enable Extended Display Range / High Dynamic Range preview (when available): Allow viewing of HDR content on compatible displays.

Mercury Transmit

Adjust configuration for sending video to external displays, broadcast monitors, or capture devices. 

• Enable Mercury Transmit: Activates video output to external devices, and you can toggle video preview with Mercury Transmit. Use the / on the numeric keypad to toggle this option. On macOS without a numeric keypad, use Control + Shift + / on the main keyboard.
• Disable video output when in the background: Select this option to prevent sending video frames to the external monitor when After Effects is not the foreground application.

3D preferences

The 3D panel controls 3D camera tool behavior and 3D model cache.

Camera Navigation

The options under Camers Navigations allow you to set preferences to use the keyboard and mouse for easy navigation while working on 3D elements.

• 1,2,3, and 4,5,6 key behavior:
  • Camera Navigation and Transform Gizmos: Use the number keys 1-6 to switch between camera views and navigate 3D space using Gizmos.
  • Go To Markers: Use the number keys 1-9 to create or navigate layer markers.

• Option-drag behavior in 3D Compositions:
  • Activate Camera Navigation: Set Alt/Option + drag to navigate the 3D camera.
  • Duplicate Layers: Set Alt/Option + drag to  duplicate layers as usual.

• Camera manipulation point: Select between None, Indicator, and Directional indicator.

Camera Navigation - Dolly

• Mouse scroll wheel behavior: Select between Magnify composition, Dolly camera, and Reverse dolly camera.
• Drag direction:  
  • Normal: Drag moves the camera.
  • Reverse: Drag moves the scene, and the camera moves in the opposite direction.

3D Cache

Empty 3D Cache: Delete and clear cached data for imported 3D models (OBJ, C4D, etc.) to free disk space.

Scripting & Expressions preferences

The Scripting & Expressions panel controls the appearance of the expression editor and scripting security.

Application Scripting

• Allow Scripts to Write Files and Access Network: Enables scripts to perform file operations and network access. Disable for security in untrusted environments.
• Enable JavaScript Debugger: Allows debugging of ExtendScript (.jsx) scripts.
• Warn User When Executing Files: Enable After Effects to warn you when you use the Run Script File option under the File menu to run a script file.
• Show Scripting Progress Dialog: Enable a modal progress dialog that displays a progress bar showing the current elapsed time since script execution began. 

Expressions

• Expression Pick Whip Writes Compact English: Once enabled determines the format of expressions created by the pick whip.
  
• Show Warning Banner When Project Contains Expression Errors: When an expression fails to evaluate, expression errors appear in a warning banner at the bottom of the Composition and Layer panels. When this option is disabled, the warning banner remains hidden even when new expression errors occur.

Expression Editor

• Font Size: Set the size of text in the expression editor between 8-24 points.
• Syntax Highlighting: Enable color coding based on syntax (keywords, strings, etc.).
• Show Line Numbers: Display line numbers in the left margin.
• Show Indent Guides: Show vertical lines indicating indentation levels.
• Highlight Matching Braces: Highlights the matching brace/bracket/parenthesis when the cursor is adjacent to one.
• Auto Insert Braces: Automatically add closing braces, brackets, and parentheses.
• Auto Indent Braces: Automatically indent code after opening braces.
• Folding: Control whether script code blocks can be collapsed or expanded in the editor for easier navigation.  
• Word Wrap: Disable word wrap, wrap lines at word boundaries, or wrap lines at any character boundary.
• Use Tabs: Use tab characters instead of spaces for indentation.
• Tab Width: Specify the number of spaces per tab or indentation level, between 2 and 8 spaces.
• Backspace Unindents: Set whether pressing Backspace on an empty line removes one level of indentation.
• Inline Errors: Display error indicators directly in the expression editor.
• Auto Complete: Show suggestions while typing property names and methods.

Theme

• Theme: Choose from predefined color themes for the expression editor.
• Color Customization: When using a Custom theme, set colors for:
  • Default Text
  • Background
  • Line Numbers
  • Keywords (if, for, while, etc.)
  • Identifiers (variable names)
  • Comments
  • Numbers
  • Strings
  • Operators
  • Indent Guides
  • Good Brace
  • Bad Brace
  • Selection

Related resources

• Workspaces, panels, and viewers
• Memory and storage
  
• 3D animation settings

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