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.
Type the email you downloaded with and press Send link. We mail you a link: open it and click Activate my panel. The panel notices by itself and opens a few seconds later. The link works for 10 minutes. You only do this again after you sign out.
Something on your computer stops After Effects from reaching the internet: often a firewall, an antivirus or a VPN (some setups block Adobe apps on purpose). Your browser still works, so open vsvxfx.com/softkeys/signin, sign in there and paste the key it shows into the panel (press Sign in with your browser first). You need the latest panel for this: download the zip again and install it over the old one.
Look in spam and promotions. The mail comes from support@vsvxfx.com. Still nothing after a few minutes? Press Send link again, or write to support@vsvxfx.com.
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.
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.
It only takes apart a precomp with no look of its own: no effects, masks, blending mode, time remap, and scale, rotation, opacity and position left as Pre-compose made them. Otherwise the layers would look different once out, so it stops and tells you what is in the way. Remove that, or leave the precomp as it is.
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.
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.
The face engine, about 66 MB, from vsvxfx.com. It is unpacked into %APPDATA%\VSVX Softkeys\engine\face. If you have not used Download or Captions yet, the panel also fetches the video tool (ffmpeg, about 86 MB) it needs to take a picture out of your clip. Both are ordinary file downloads. After that everything runs on your computer and nothing is uploaded.
It works best when the face is visible. If the person turns away, the key follows the movement for a few seconds and can drift, and after a cut it takes the largest face. Move the playhead to a frame where the face shows clearly before you press the key. Lock needs a clip with no parent and no Position or Scale keyframes of its own; Remove the lock takes it off again. If it says the engine does not start, install Microsoft’s free Visual C++ runtime (vc_redist.x64.exe) and try again. Your antivirus may need a moment to check the program the first time. It works on Windows only for now.
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.
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.
Inside the After Effects project, in a composition called VSVX Watermark. In a new project, select your watermark layer and press Save the selected layer again, or choose An image or video file in the Watermark options: a file works in every project.
Close and reopen After Effects once so the panel updates itself, then try again. If it still does not work, install Microsoft’s free Visual C++ runtime (vc_redist.x64.exe), restart After Effects and try again. Still stuck? Write to support@vsvxfx.com and say which Windows and which antivirus you use.