159 After Effects text animation presets, previewed before you apply them

Does After Effects have text animation presets built in?

Yes. After Effects ships its own text presets in the Effects & Presets panel: open Animation Presets and find the Text folder, split into sub-folders such as Animate In, Animate Out, Blurs and Tracking. They are free. Picking one is the slow part.

The built-in way, step by step:

1. Select the text layer and put the playhead where the animation should start.
2. Open Window › Effects & Presets, expand Animation Presets and open the Text folder.
3. Double-click a preset. It lands at the playhead as a text animator with keyframes.
4. Press U to see the keyframes, then drag them to change the timing.

The panel lists names, not motion, so to see a preset move you either open Animation › Browse Presets, which needs Adobe Bridge, or apply presets one after another and undo.

By hand, Animation › Animate Text adds an animator with a Range Selector. Keyframe its Offset, then under Advanced set Based On to characters, words or lines, pick a Shape and adjust Ease High and Ease Low. That is where every stagger comes from. When you get a look you like, Animation › Save Animation Preset stores it as an .ffx file for the next job.

Which After Effects text animation presets are in Type studio?

Type studio holds 159 text animation and expression presets in six groups, counted in the shipped 0.58.40 panel. Each group is a tab, next to Recent and your starred favourites. Type studio is one section of the mouzeclick workspace for After Effects.

The Text and Motion groups are expressions rather than text animators. They go on one property, with settings you can change, and they are listed name by name on the After Effects expressions library page.

How do you apply a text preset and change its timing?

Select your text layer, hover presets until one fits, and double-click it. The card controls then set where it acts and how long it takes.

1. Open Window › Extensions › mouzeclick workspace. Pick Type studio from the workspace switcher, or press / and type “type”.
2. Select the text layer in your comp.
3. Choose a group and hover a preset. It plays beside the pointer, inside the panel, with “Double-click to apply” underneath. If the preview gets in the way, the Hover button turns it off.
4. Open the preset's card for its controls: sliders with Reset; In, Out or In/Out; characters, words or lines; and expression or keyframes where the preset offers both.
5. Press Apply, or double-click the preset. Copy is there when you want it somewhere else.

Expression or keyframes? If a client will ask for changes, take the expression: you move a slider instead of dragging twenty keys. If the project goes to another animator, keyframes are easier for them to read in the Graph Editor. I default to keyframes for anything leaving my machine.

Need each word on its own layer first? The Toolbox's Text exploder splits a text layer into characters, words, lines or paragraphs and leaves each piece where it was. The text exploder guide covers when that beats an animator.

How do stagger text presets handle order and easing?

Each of the 48 one-shot stagger presets takes one of five orders and one of eight eases, so one preset gives you 40 combinations before you touch duration or overshoot.

• Orders: first to last, last to first, from the centre out, from the edges in, or random.
• Eases: Smooth, Expo, Back, Elastic, Bounce, Snap, Linear and Step.
• Looks: fades, slides, pops, flips, 3D twists, blurs and decodes. A few names: Rise and settle, Headline slam, Pop from centre, Card fold, Twist 3D, Focus pull, Motion streak, Scramble decode, Glitch decode, Reverse cascade.
• Loops: the other six presets keep going, and take speed and spread instead of an ease.

By hand, “first to last” is a Range Selector with its Offset keyframed, and “random” is the Randomize Order switch. Centre-out and edges-in are where hand-building gets fiddly, and that is where the presets save the most time. Back and Elastic overshoot, so leave big headlines some room.

For the curve itself rather than the text, the After Effects easing presets page covers Easing lab's 44 ready curves.

Can you build kinetic typography from one, two or three words?

Yes. The Multi group has 24 kinetic word templates, and each one previews live with your own words, colours, background and size before anything reaches the comp.

• One word (8): Slam, Echo stack, Letter drop, Glitch split, Bar wipe, Zoom trail, Typewriter, Flip in.
• Two words (6): Push up, Meet in the middle, Big and small, Accent box, Split line, Spin swap.
• Three words (10): Rapid fire, Stair stack, Lyric lines, Slot roll, Color punch, Outline fill, Countdown, Corner build, Tracking breathe, Neon flicker.

Speed is a control too, so a template cut for a fast track can be slowed for a voice-over.

On a Mac, or if you prefer a small separate panel, there is mouzetype, one of the 22 mouzeclick extensions. It has 17 kinetic type styles in two groups (In and out; Accents, loops and exits), with styles such as Rise, Scale pop, Blur in, Flip 3D, Typewriter, Wave, Glitch and Highlight bar. They go on as real After Effects text animators, so Retime makes every style faster or slower at once without applying it again, and Remove styles takes off only what mouzetype made. mouzetype runs on Windows and Mac.

Where are SaaS-style text, counters and SRT subtitles?

SaaS-style text and counters are in Type studio; subtitle and text-formatting tools sit in other sections of the same workspace. The SaaS group has 11 interface-style text animations: Blur in, Streak wipe, Slide blur out, Typewriter, Fade up, Cinematic tracking, Scale pop, Glow pop, Light sweep, Bounce down and Glow reveal, each with duration and timing controls. They pair well with the 81 animated After Effects UI templates in Shape studio.

Counters are expressions in the Text group: Number counter, Currency counter, Percentage counter, Decimal counter, Bounce counter, Countdown timer, Simple countdown and Stopwatch, plus Date display and Time display. Each has its own settings. Motion lab's Fx presets add a Number counter rig with a currency symbol, a thousands separator and short formats such as 10.4K.

For subtitles you already have, the SRT importer in Motion lab's Fx presets brings an SRT file into the comp. Its Subtitle editor finds and replaces, changes case (all caps, all lowercase, first word or every word capitalised) and spellchecks subtitle layers in bulk.

Formatting is in the Toolbox. Its text panel edits size, leading, kerning, tracking, fill and stroke of the selected text, with all caps, small caps, superscript, subscript, faux bold and faux italic, and Text re-align changes justification without the text jumping. If you need the words written from the audio, Caption studio does that; see auto captions in After Effects.

Why are my After Effects text animation presets not working?

Usually the preset is fine and something around it isn't. Check these in order:

• The wrong layer is selected. Text presets animate text layers. On a shape layer or a precomp they do nothing useful.
• It started somewhere you are not looking. Built-in presets land at the playhead. Press U on the layer to see where the keys went.
• It needs a plugin you don't have. Third-party packs often depend on their own plugin. Mister Horse's Text Presets, for example, need the free Animation Composer plugin.
• A font is missing. If a preset sets a font you don't have, After Effects substitutes one and the spacing changes.
• An expression errors in a non-English After Effects. Expressions that call an effect by its English name can break in another language. mouzeclick's mouzekit rigs are written to work in any language of After Effects.
• You are on a Mac. The mouzeclick workspaces are Windows only, so Type studio isn't there. See what the Mac app includes.

How do Type studio's presets compare with Animation Composer's text presets?

Animation Composer's Text Presets pack is far bigger. Type studio is smaller and sits next to the rest of a working panel. Facts below were checked on the makers' pages on 31 October 2026.

Where Animation Composer is the better pick: you want more than a thousand text looks to browse, you work on a Mac, or you need projects to render on machines without the plugin, which Mister Horse says works. Its free plan also allows commercial use.

Where Type studio fits: you already cut on Windows and want text presets, captions, shakes, easing curves and UI templates in one panel under one plan. If that is you, the all-in-one After Effects extension guide shows the rest of the panel, and the Animation Composer comparison goes tool by tool.

Questions people ask

Sources

Checked on 2026-10-31. Prices and features change: each link goes to the maker's own page.

1. Mister Horse: Text Presets for After Effects (checked 31 Oct 2026)
2. Mister Horse: pricing (checked 31 Oct 2026)
3. Mister Horse: Animation Composer for After Effects (checked 31 Oct 2026)

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