How to use the Typewriter preset in After Effects

The Typewriter preset in After Effects is undoubtably one of the most handy built-in presets. This preset automatically animates in your text one character at a time.

How to use the Typewriter preset

1. Select a text layer.
2. Apply the Typewriter preset from the Effects & Presets panel.
3. Adjust the applied keyframes. By default the animation will begin at the current time indicator and run for 2.5 seconds. You can adjust the keyframes to speed up or slow down the animation.

How the Typewriter preset works

The Typewriter preset changes hidden Animator properties that can be found on any text layer by selecting Animate > All Transform Properties.

Here’s everything this preset does under the hood:

1. Sets Start (Animator 1 > Range Selector 1) to 100%
2. Adds 0% & 100% keyframes to End (Animator 1 > Range Selector 1)
3. Sets Smoothness (Animator 1 > Range Selector 1 > Advanced) to 0%
4. Sets Opacity (Animator 1) to 0%

Typewriter limitations

While incredibly useful, the Typewriter preset has a few limitations.

Type is only animated in by opacity

This is fine for plenty of uses, but when using center or right paragraph alignment, the animation isn’t natural.

Text box remains static

If you select a text layer, you’ll notice the size of the text box stays the same regardless of what text is being displayed. This causes the popular expression sourceRectAtTime() to not work.

We use this expression in many of our tools, including Type, Get Rect, and Parental Controls.

Keyframes are imprecise

Based on the way this property is controlled, the animation doesn’t line up with the keyframes accurately. For example, the animation will usually finish before the Start value reaches 100%. This can cause frustration if you’re trying to sync the text animation up with other things in your composition.

Typewriter+

To overcome these limitations, we made a free, improved version of the Typewriter preset called Typewriter+. Here’s how to use Typewriter+:

1. Select a text layer.
2. Apply the Typewriter+ preset from the Effects & Presets panel.
3. Adjust the applied keyframes. By default the animation will begin at the current time indicator and run for 2.5 seconds. You can adjust the keyframes to speed up or slow down the animation.

If you’ve used the default Typewriter preset, these steps should feel familiar.

How Typewriter+ works

Typewriter+ adds the following expression to Source Text of the text layer:

src = text.sourceText
typeWrite = effect("Typewriter")("Pseudo/490155-0001")
len = src.length
remove = len-(100-typeWrite)/100*len
src.substr(0,remove)

It also adds an expression control called Typewriter, and adds 0% & 100% keyframes.

Typewriter+ overcomes all the limitations of the default Typewriter preset, however it does have a couple of its own.

Typewriter+ limitations

Can’t use multi-style text layers

All of the text within the applied text layer will be conformed to the same font, color, size.

Can only animate in by character

Currently, you can only animate in the text one character at a time. We do have plans to allow animation by line or word in the future.

Get Typewriter+