Figma Motion – Usability Feedback and Feature Requests

I've been really enjoying the new Motion features in Figma. The experience feels intuitive, and creating animations has become much faster and more enjoyable. Even in its current state, Motion shows a lot of potential, and I'm excited to see how it evolves.

While testing, I came across a few areas that could significantly improve the workflow:

1. Nested Layers in the Timeline
   When working with nested layers, child layers currently appear individually in the timeline alongside their parent layer. This can make the timeline cluttered and difficult to manage. It would be helpful if the timeline supported nesting similar to the Layers panel, with expandable and collapsible groups.

2. Dedicated Clipping Mask Workflow
   Motion currently lacks dedicated clipping mask support. A masking workflow similar to After Effects would make it much easier to create and animate reveals, transitions, and other advanced motion effects without relying on workarounds.

3. Dedicated Alignment Controls
   Motion currently does not provide alignment controls. As a result, designers often need to switch back and forth between the Design and Motion tabs to align elements, which interrupts the animation workflow. Adding alignment tools directly within Motion would make the experience more seamless and efficient.

4. Layer In/Out Points and Timeline Placement
   Layers currently don't seem to have intuitive start and end points in the timeline. For example, if I'm working at a specific timestamp and add a new element, it gets placed at the beginning of the timeline instead of at the current playhead position. It would be much more intuitive if newly created layers could be inserted directly at the playhead, with adjustable in/out points similar to traditional motion design tools.

5. Multi-Select in the Animation Panel
   The dedicated Animation panel currently doesn't allow selecting multiple animations at once. Although this can be done through the timeline as a workaround, native multi-select support within the Animation panel would make editing and managing animations much more efficient.

6. Design and Motion State Separation
   When switching from the Motion tab back to the Design tab, all animated elements become visible at once, regardless of their timing in the animation. This can be confusing because it's difficult to understand the actual state of the design. A clearer separation or synchronization between Design and Motion states would make the workflow more intuitive.

7. Preset Animation Management and Timeline Filters
   It would be helpful to have filtering options in the timeline panel for properties such as Position, Opacity, Scale, Rotation, etc., especially when working on complex animations.

   Additionally, when using animation presets, the timeline currently exposes the underlying animated properties instead of displaying the preset itself. It would be more intuitive if presets appeared in the timeline by their preset names (for example, "Fade In" or "Slide Up"), while still allowing users to expand them to inspect or edit individual properties if needed.

   A dedicated preset properties panel would also be valuable, allowing users to easily modify, swap, and fine-tune preset animations without manually adjusting the underlying properties.

These are the main improvements I noticed during testing. Most of these features are fundamental to modern motion design workflows, so adding and refining them would greatly enhance the usability and flexibility of Figma Motion.

Overall, I'm very excited about the direction Figma Motion is taking and look forward to future updates.