Script and expression manager for After Effects

Select one or more properties in the timeline, such as Position on three layers, and click an Expression tool. Flexile writes the expression onto every selected property in one undo step and confirms how many it changed. There is nothing to paste and no expression field to open.

Used the wrong way, the tool tells you instead of failing silently. With no property selected you get “No properties selected.” With no comp open, “No active composition.” A selected property that can’t hold an expression is skipped and named in the message, while the others still get it.

Click a layer in After Effects and the Flexile panel shows its name, or “Multiple layers”, together with the extra actions that fit that layer. The same live context tells the Text, Elements and Audio pages what you are working on.

ExtendScript has no event for a selection change, so a panel that relies on it alone has to ask on a timer or wait for a click. Flexile installs a small native After Effects plugin that reports the selected layers to the panel as soon as they change. On Windows that plugin needs an administrator install. Without it, the panel checks the selection once a second.

Other ways to keep scripts and expressions one click away, with prices from each official page, checked 5 October 2026. Flexile is our own product.

• KBar3 (aescripts): customizable, shareable toolbars whose buttons run effects and presets, menu commands, extensions, expressions, scripts and shell commands. $39.99, free trial, After Effects CC 2019 and above.
• Flexile: 12 built-in tools and your own Script and Expression tools, synced to your account, tested in the panel and writable by AI apps over MCP, in a panel that also covers easing, text, transitions and audio. Free during beta, After Effects 2025 or newer.
• Quiver 2 (Workbench): applies saved expressions to your layers, with an expression library you edit from the panel. $20 on Gumroad, After Effects CC 2014 and newer.
• Expression Adder: a curated library of your favourite expressions, saved in one file you can import wherever you work. $9.99 on Gumroad.
• Animation presets (built into After Effects): save a property with its expression as an .ffx preset and apply it in other projects. Free, but the expression breaks when it refers to a layer or property the other project lacks.

What Flexile does not have: buttons for menu commands, effects or shell commands, toolbars you can share, and tools longer than 1,000 characters. Cloud Tools belong to one account and can’t be shared yet.