How to move the playhead in After Effects (with the keyboard)
There are a couple of ways to move the playhead inside your composition in Adobe After Effects. I will first show you the most obvious ways of doing it but then also some keyboard shortcuts that can save you some time.
How to move the playhead in After Effects
First, you can click and drag the playhead left or right by clicking at the top of the playhead. You can also click a time on the time ruler at the top to make the playhead jump to that specific point in the composition.
If you are using keyframes, you can have the playhead jump from keyframe to keyframe by clicking J for left or K for right. And if you hold down shift while doing it, you’ll only jump between the keyframes in the selected layer.
If your composition is zoomed in and you want to move to wherever the playhead is, you can hit 1 a couple of times to zoom out and then 2 a couple of times to zoom in, and it will then zoom into wherever the playead is located.
Or, you can click keyboard shortcut D to jump to wherever the playhead is located.
…And to save even more time, download my 12 free motion graphic templates by clicking the image below. Have a nice day!
🎞 Watch the tutorial here!
Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel for hundreds of short tutorials just like this one.
Thanks for reading!
