Install, sign-in, updates and the keys — the questions that come up, answered short.
The two things that usually go wrong, and the fix.
You ran it from inside the zip. Right-click the zip → Extract All…, then run Install.bat from the new folder.
Do it by hand: copy the local.aeshortcuts folder to %APPDATA%\Adobe\CEP\extensions (press Win + R, paste that path, Enter — create the folder if it's missing). Then double-click enable-panel.reg, click Yes, and restart After Effects.
2019 (16.0) up to 2026, on Windows and Mac.
Unzip, close After Effects, then right-click Install.command → Open → Open (macOS asks once because the file is not from the App Store). Then Window › Extensions › VSVX Softkeys. If the panel is missing: open Terminal and run defaults write com.adobe.CSXS.12 PlayerDebugMode 1 (use 11 for AE 2022–2023, 13 for newer), then restart After Effects.
Your email is your key.
The panel accepts the email you typed when you downloaded. Use exactly that one. If you never entered one (old zip), download once from the site with your email — you don't need to reinstall.
No. Since 0.18 the panel checks for updates when it opens and installs them itself. Close and reopen the panel to get the latest; the version is shown at the bottom.
Drag the panel very narrow and it becomes a column of coloured icons. Every key then runs in one click, with no options opening: keys with a drawer repeat the last thing you ran from it (the last curve, preset, effect or position), and Keyframes always fits to the layer end. If a key has nothing saved yet, widen the panel and use it once.
Drag the panel very narrow and it becomes a column of coloured icons. Every key then runs in one click, with no options opening: keys with a drawer repeat the last thing you ran from it (the last curve, preset, effect or position), and Keyframes always fits to the layer end. If a key has nothing saved yet, widen the panel and use it once.
The panel keeps working for 3 days without a connection. It just needs to see the internet once in a while to confirm your sign-in.
Things people ask.
Three small tools, straight from their makers on GitHub, into your user folder: the downloader (yt-dlp, 18 MB), the video converter (ffmpeg, 86 MB) and, for YouTube only, a helper YouTube now requires (deno, 45 MB). Once. After that it's just the file you asked for.
Press Update engine in the Download options and try again — platforms change often and the downloader ships fixes just as often. Private or age-restricted videos can't be fetched. If one link keeps failing, send it through the feedback form.
The panel keeps the file exactly as the site sends it, so quality and frame rate stay original. Some TikToks only exist in 1080p as H.265, which After Effects decodes more slowly than H.264. Turn on hardware accelerated decoding in the After Effects preferences; if it is still heavy, pre-render that clip once.
Switch Markers to Fewer or More and press Detect beats again (Clear first). Auto aims for the hits that stand out; Fewer keeps only the big ones. If you want markers on an even grid instead, type the BPM.
The speech engine and its language model, about 600 MB, straight from the makers of whisper.cpp and Hugging Face. It lands in your user folder and is never downloaded again. From then on Captions works offline: your audio never leaves the computer and there is nothing to pay.
Roughly half the length of the clip on a normal machine — a one-minute clip takes about thirty seconds. After Effects stays responsive while it works.
Set the language instead of leaving it on Detect: on short or noisy clips the automatic guess is the usual culprit. Music under the voice also hurts — if you have the clean voice track, select that layer instead.
Both work on Mac since 0.25.1, on Apple Silicon and Intel. The first time, the panel fetches the Mac versions of the speech engine and the downloader by itself, just like on Windows.
MP3 and WAV always work; most MP4s do. If a format fails, the panel automatically uses After Effects' own analysis instead (less precise). Export the track as MP3 or WAV for best results.
Type the BPM in the field if you know it and run Detect beats again, with the playhead on the first kick. Tell me which track it was via feedback — real tracks are how the detector gets better.
Press Rescan in the Presets drawer. It reads Adobe's preset folder and your User Presets.
Remove the expression first (Alt-click the stopwatch). The panel's own Physics expressions are fine and don't block anything.
Use the feedback form: which key you pressed and what was selected in the timeline. If After Effects showed an error, the exact text helps a lot.