Pitchdeck animates the direct child layers of each slide. Use the Animations tab to select elements and edit their motion together.
Full motion plays in Preview, Presenter and Local HTML. Hosted sharing checks that the deployed viewer supports advanced motion. MP4 renders supported 2D motion and transitions. Native PowerPoint supports a conservative fade/build subset; unsupported motion is reported. Keynote, Google Slides and static formats omit Pitchdeck motion.
Select elements
- Select a slide in the left sidebar and open Animations.
- Click an element in Animation order or the slide preview. Hold Command on Mac or Ctrl on Windows to add or remove elements. Hold Shift to select a range.
- Use Select all to select every listed element. Elements without motion appear under Not animated. Search by layer name on slides with many layers.
When several elements are selected, the inspector shows Mixed for values that differ. Editing a field changes that field across the selection and preserves their other settings, links and media.
Add an animation
To animate a whole slide at once, choose Animate this slide in the Animations panel or Animate slide in the timeline (both appear while the slide has no animations), or run Animate slide from Commands. The title leads, a subtitle follows, then content rises in row by row in reading order. Text inside a card enters with its card, and backgrounds, logos, footers, page numbers and dividers stay still. This replaces the slide's existing animations, so use Undo to restore them.
For an element without motion, choose Fade, Slide up, Scale or Pop, or choose All effects… to browse every animation. Effects are grouped into Entrance, Emphasis and Exit, plus Custom for your own keyframes. Hover over an effect to preview its motion.
Subtle options sit near the top of Entrance: Wipe reveals an element from one edge, Reveal opens it in a circle, Settle eases it in from slightly larger, and Grow extends it from the left, centre, right or bottom, which suits bars and charts. Exit includes directional Fade, Wipe, Close and Shrink. These play in the editor, Presenter, Local HTML and MP4; PowerPoint keeps fades only.
After you choose an animation, use Direction to set where it enters from, or Style for variations such as Up and Down. Each change plays the edited effect on the slide so you can see the result.
Set timing
Under Plays, choose when the effect starts. A line underneath describes it in plain words, for example which effect it plays with or after, or which click it waits for.
| Plays | Behavior |
|---|---|
| On click | Waits for a click while presenting. |
| With previous | Starts alongside the preceding effect, plus its delay. |
| After previous | Starts after the preceding effect finishes, plus its delay. |
Under Speed, choose Fast (0.3 seconds), Normal (0.6 seconds) or Slow (1.2 seconds), or choose Custom and enter a Duration. Enter a Delay in seconds. More options contains Easing and Effect type. Easing shows preset curves, including Gentle, Overshoot and Anticipate; hover a preset to see a dot move with that curve. Drag the curve's two handles, or focus a handle and use the arrow keys, for a custom curve. Effect type is set automatically from the chosen animation; change it only when an effect should play as a different type, such as a fade used as an exit.
For text layers, Build text chooses All at once or By line. By line reveals the text one line after another; set Lines to match the text if the estimate is off, and Between lines for the gap. Line builds play in the editor, Presenter, Local HTML and MP4. PowerPoint animates the whole text layer.
To sequence several elements, select them, enter a spacing in seconds under Stagger selected layers, choose Forward or Reverse, then choose Stagger. A spacing of 0 starts them together.
Review the order
Animation order lists every effect in play order. Highlighted numbers wait for a click; grey numbers play automatically. Matching numbers appear on the slide preview. Each row shows a small bar for when the effect plays. Drag a row, or hover over it and use the arrow buttons, to move it earlier or later. Click a row to select the element and play that effect.
Choose Timeline below the slide, next to Speaker notes, to see every effect on one time axis. The pane switches to Timeline on its own while you choose, edit or play animations, unless you've picked a tab on that slide. Dashed lines mark each click. Drag a bar to change its delay, or drag its right edge to change its length; timing snaps to 0.05 seconds, and holding Alt moves it freely. Click or drag along the time ruler to move the playhead and scrub through the animation; the left and right arrow keys nudge it. The playhead follows playback while previewing.
Bars snap to the edges of other bars, to click lines and to the slide start, and a red guide line shows the match. When the slide has a transition, a Transition row appears at the top; drag its right edge to change its length. Slides with narration show a Narration row with its waveform; drag it to change when the narration starts, or click it to open the audio settings.
Click a bar to focus it, then:
| Action | Result |
|---|---|
| Left or right arrow | Nudges the delay by 0.05 seconds. Hold Shift for 0.5 seconds. |
| Alt+Up or Alt+Down | Moves the effect earlier or later. |
| Enter, or double-click the bar | Opens the effect picker. |
| Delete | Removes the effect. |
| Space | Plays or pauses the slide. |
Shift-click or Command/Ctrl-click bars to select several, or drag across empty track space to select every bar the box touches. Dragging any selected bar moves the whole selection, arrow keys nudge it, and Delete removes it. With several bars selected, the right-click menu adds Stagger n animations, which spaces them 0.15 seconds apart.
To zoom the timeline, hold Command/Ctrl and scroll, pinch on a trackpad, or use − and + above it; choose the percentage to fit the whole slide again. Deck motion above the timeline opens the deck-wide view.
Right-click a bar for Change effect…, Play this animation, Copy animation, Paste animation, Move earlier, Move later and Remove animation. Drag a row's name up or down to change the order. Drag the top edge of the timeline to resize it; double-click the edge to fit it to its rows again.
Add, copy and reuse effects
Choose + beside the element name to add another effect. An element can have an entrance, an emphasis and an exit; its effects are listed so you can select one to edit or choose − to remove it. Sequence effects on the same element when their transforms would overlap.
The ⋯ menu contains Copy animation, Paste animation and Remove all animations. Copy and paste also work with Command/Ctrl+Shift+C and Command/Ctrl+Shift+V. Removing animations keeps links and media.
Expand Motion styles, enter a name under Save current as, then choose Save style. The style uses the first selected element's motion. Choose a saved style to apply it to another selection in the same deck.
Animation metadata stays attached to the Figma layer. Copying the layer into another slide also carries its animation settings.
Preview and undo changes
While editing, Play (or Space) and the timeline playhead show the slide as it looks at that moment, so you can check timing without leaving edit mode. Elements that aren't visible yet at the playhead show as dashed outlines, so you can still find and select them. Click an element on the slide to return to the full slide with every element visible and selectable. Choose Preview for Replay, Next click, the time slider and clickable links.
Slides with animations show a play badge with the number of effects on their thumbnail. Hover the thumbnail to play its animations in place, or choose the badge to open the slide and play it. Slides with video, audio or embeds keep their still thumbnail.
Make it move animates the whole deck in one step. Open it from Tools > Animate whole deck…, from Animate the whole deck in the Animations panel when no layer is selected, from Deck motion above the timeline, or from Commands. Choose Calm (gentle fades), Confident (rise and scale) or Bold (sideways moves and pops), then Apply to n slides. Each slide is choreographed the same way as Animate slide, with the style's effects: large images scale or fade rather than bounce, and busy slides tighten their timing so every build finishes in under about two seconds. Slides change with a fade (Calm and Confident) or a slide (Bold); the first slide has no transition. Keep slides I've already animated is on by default. The whole change is one Undo step, and the effects use standard easing so PowerPoint exports keep them.
Deck motion, from above the timeline or from Commands, lists every included slide with its animation and click counts, transition and length. Choose a slide to open it. Use this slide's transition everywhere copies the current slide's transition to every included slide, and Animate n unanimated slides runs Animate slide on slides that have no animations yet. Both can be undone. Use the slide's Transition controls to set its entry transition.
Use Undo and Redo, or Command/Ctrl+Z and Command/Ctrl+Shift+Z, for animation, notes, section and motion-setting edits. A small dot in the toolbar shows that changes are saved; it changes to Saving… or Unsaved while changes are pending. If saving fails, use Retry saving before refreshing, presenting or exporting.
Commands, timeline and Morph
Choose Tools > Commands & search or press Command/Ctrl+K to find slide content or open tools. Motion copied with Command/Ctrl+Shift+C can be pasted to selected objects on another slide with Command/Ctrl+Shift+V. Drag on empty preview space to select intersecting objects; hold Command/Ctrl or Shift to add to the selection.
For exact start times and property tracks, choose Open visual motion timeline in Commands. Drag a bar to move its start, or drag its right edge to change its duration. Timing snaps to 0.05 seconds; hold Alt for unsnapped movement. Exact start and duration fields are available. Property track adds independent position, scale, rotation or opacity animation to the selected objects. Tracks can compose alongside a preset animation. The timeline shows up to 150 matching effects; use search to narrow larger slides.
Select Morph in the slide transition controls, then use Configure Morph / Magic Move in Commands to review object matches. Smart Morph matches objects automatically: unique layer names first, then instances of the same component and identical text, even when layers were renamed. When both slides have the same number of objects with a repeated name, they pair in reading order; otherwise repeated names stay unmatched unless you choose a source object. Each match shows why it was made. Unmatched objects fade. Source layers are kept intact.
Linked motion styles and brand kits
Applying a reusable motion style links the selected objects to that style. Update the style to change linked objects while retaining individual field overrides. Detach keeps the current motion as an independent snapshot. If a definition is removed, its embedded snapshot keeps playing.
Open Linked motion styles and libraries in Commands to rename styles, import or export a reviewed JSON library, or store them as Figma string variables. Available published variable libraries can be imported. Saving a local variable does not publish a team library; use Figma's library workflow to publish it.
Open Brand kits, object roles and relayout to assign semantic roles, alternative text, decorative flags and reading order. Create linked title, body and accent styles, then review their application to the current slide, selected slides or the whole loaded deck. Local style overrides can be preserved. Role-based relayout moves existing top-level objects into a reviewed arrangement; it keeps their IDs, content, media and motion. Source edits and Figma style changes use Figma Undo.
Narration
Open Narration and audio cues from Commands or the timeline. Upload audio, or record a take when the host permits microphone access. Recording stops at 120 seconds. Clips must be smaller than 2 MB; the local library allows 3 MB per file. Set the cue start and volume, then choose Save slide cue.
Audio is stored in the plugin's local library on this computer. Reattach the clip on another computer before exporting. Local HTML and MP4 bundle the audio; sharing a hosted deck uploads the attached audio with the presentation. Browser autoplay rules may require Play narration. Native editable presentation exports do not include these narration cues.
Updating a linked brand kit changes all objects using those native Figma styles in the file. The scope control determines which objects receive styles or relayout proposals. Typography and text colors use separate linked styles. Reduced-motion playback keeps click builds, revealing each current build instantly.