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Sync Settings in After Effects

  1. After Effects User Guide
  2. Beta releases
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  3. Getting started
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    2. What's new in After Effects 
    3. Release Notes | After Effects
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  6. Importing footage
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  7. Text and Graphics
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      1. Work with Motion Graphics templates in After Effects
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  18. Working with other applications
    1. Dynamic Link and After Effects
    2. Working with After Effects and other applications
      1. Export After Effects project as Premiere Pro project
    3. Sync Settings in After Effects
    4. Creative Cloud Libraries in After Effects
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    6. Cinema 4D and Cineware
  19. Collaboration: Frame.io, and Team Projects
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  20. Memory, storage, performance
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  21. Knowledge Base
    1. Known issues
    2. Fixed issues
    3. Frequently asked questions
    4. After Effects and macOS Ventura
    5. How After Effects handles low memory issues while previewing

Learn to manage and synchronize your settings in After Effects using the Sync Settings feature through Creative Cloud.

Sync Settings will no longer be available starting with After Effects 24.3:

After Effects versions 23 and 24.0-24.2 will continue to support Sync Settings until December 2025, after which it will no longer work in any After Effects versions.

You can still share your preferences manually. The Startup & Repair preferences panel provides easy access to the preferences folder, which can be copied to other machines. These preferences control keyboard shortcuts, composition settings, interpretation rules, render and output settings, and more, including settings not previously synchronized by Sync Settings

When you work on multiple computers, managing and syncing preferences among the computers can be time-consuming, complex, and error-prone.

The Sync Settings feature in After Effects allows you to sync preferences and settings via Creative Cloud. For example, if you use two computers, the Sync Settings feature makes it easy to keep those settings synchronized across these two computers.

The synchronization takes place via your Adobe Creative Cloud account. Settings are uploaded to your Creative Cloud account and then are downloaded and applied on the other computer. You can also synchronize settings from another Creative Cloud account. After Effects creates a user profile on your computer and uses it to synchronize settings to and from the associated Creative Cloud account.

You can initiate the synchronization manually – it does not happen automatically and cannot be scheduled.

Synchronize your settings

To initiate the synchronization, choose Edit > <your Adobe ID> > Sync Settings Now (Windows) or After Effects > <your Adobe ID> > Sync Settings Now (macOS).

You can also synchronize the settings on the Start screen. Select Sync Settings > Sync Now <your Adobe ID> on the screen to initiate the synchronization.

  • Download Settings: Synchronize Settings from Creative Cloud to your computer and overwrite the local version with the Creative Cloud version of settings.
  • Upload Settings: Synchronize settings from this local computer to Creative Cloud.

Progress and details about the synchronization are displayed in the Info panel (Window > Info).

Note:

Restart After Effects to apply downloaded preferences after using Sync Settings.

Managing synchronization

Clear Settings

Select  Edit > <your Adobe ID> > Clear Settings (Windows) or  After Effects <your Adobe ID> > Clear Settings (macOS) to clear all settings and reset them to the default state. Clear Settings also resets the token used to indicate the user's settings that were used to sync the settings.

Select Quit to clear the current preferences, and close After Effects. When the application is launched again, default preferences are set.

Manage Sync Settings

To change the settings for the Sync Settings feature (Windows):

  • Select Edit > <your Adobe ID> > Manage Sync Settings
  • Select Edit > Preferences > Sync Settings

To change the settings for the Sync Settings feature (macOS):  

  • Select After Effects > <your Adobe ID> > Manage Sync Settings
  • Select After Effects > Preferences > Sync Settings  

You can change the following settings in the settings dialog:

Automatically clear user profile on application quit

Enable this option to clear the user profile when you quit After Effects. On next launch, preferences are fetched from the default Adobe ID used to license the product.

Select the preferences to synchronize.

  1. Synchronizable Preferences
  2. Keyboard Shortcuts
  3. Composition Settings Presets
  4. Interpretation Rules
  5. Render Settings Templates
  6. Output Module Settings Templates
Note:
  • Synchronizable preferences refer to preferences that are not dependent on computer or hardware settings.
  • Keyboard shortcuts created for Windows synchronize only with Windows, and macOS keyboard shortcuts synchronize only with macOS.

Choose one of the following options from the drop-down menu to instruct After Effects when to synchronize the settings:

  • Ask my preference
  • Always Upload Settings
  • Always Download Settings
Note:

The Sync Settings feature does not synchronize files that are manually placed in the preferences folder location.

 Adobe

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