Aphexar

Dock

A free After Effects panel, laid out in the order you actually work: make the layer, place it, organise it, time it, animate it, effect it. Ten modules, one undo step per action, and it always tells you why. Windows and macOS.

01 Install

Two minutes, no admin rights, nothing to download separately.

Unzip the download and keep both items together — the Dock folder and Install Aphexar Dock.jsx. The installer looks for the folder next to itself.
Open After Effects.
File ▸ Scripts ▸ Run Script File… and choose Install Aphexar Dock.jsx.
Read the message it gives you. It reports how many files it copied and where. If something failed it says so — it will not claim success having done nothing.
Quit After Effects completely and reopen it. Panels are only registered at launch, so a reload is not enough.
Window ▸ Extensions ▸ Aphexar Dock.

Extensions, not Scripts

The Dock is a CEP extension, so it lives under Window ▸ Extensions — not in the main Window list where .jsx script panels appear. If you are scrolling the Window menu looking for it, you are in the wrong submenu.

02 What the installer does

Both steps are per-user. Nothing is written outside your own profile and no administrator password is needed.

Step	Where
Copies the panel	WIN`%APPDATA%\Adobe\CEP\extensions\com.aphexar.dock` MAC`~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CEP/extensions/com.aphexar.dock`
Allows unsigned extensions to load	WIN`HKCU\Software\Adobe\CSXS.n` → `PlayerDebugMode = 1` MAC`defaults write com.adobe.CSXS.n PlayerDebugMode 1`

It sets every CEP version from 9 to 12, because which one After Effects uses depends on its release, and setting one that is not installed is harmless. Guessing wrong means the panel silently never appears.

03 If the panel does not appear

Almost always one of three things, in this order:

After Effects was not fully restarted. Quit it — not just close the project — and reopen.
You are looking in Window, not Window ▸ Extensions.
PlayerDebugMode did not take. Run the line for your platform in Terminal or Command Prompt, then restart After Effects.

WIN Command Prompt:

reg add "HKCU\Software\Adobe\CSXS.11" /v PlayerDebugMode /t REG_SZ /d 1 /f
reg add "HKCU\Software\Adobe\CSXS.12" /v PlayerDebugMode /t REG_SZ /d 1 /f

MAC Terminal:

defaults write com.adobe.CSXS.11 PlayerDebugMode 1
defaults write com.adobe.CSXS.12 PlayerDebugMode 1
killall -u $USER cfprefsd

Why this flag exists

Adobe only loads extensions that carry a code-signing certificate unless this per-user flag is set. The Dock is free and unsigned, so the flag is what lets it load. It changes nothing else about how After Effects behaves.

04 Removing it

Delete the folder. There is nothing else to undo.

WIN %APPDATA%\Adobe\CEP\extensions\com.aphexar.dock
MAC ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CEP/extensions/com.aphexar.dock

05 Before you use it

Save your project first

The Dock changes your composition. So does every other script. Save before running anything that edits a project — this one included.

Every action lands as a single undo step, and there is an Undo button at the bottom of the Timeline section.

The ten modules, in panel order

#	Module	Does
01	New	Seven layer types, plus duplicate, delete and reorder
02	Anchor	Move the pivot using real content bounds, layer stays put
03	Place	Move the layer into any of nine positions in the comp
04	Comp	Pre-comp, un-comp, all sixteen label colours
05	Switches	Layer switches, plus the composition masters
06	Track matte	Alpha and luma, inverted, clear
07	Timeline	Split, cut, trim, and sliders across the comp
08	Keyframes	Pick and delete keys without the timeline
09	Curve	A real cubic-bezier easing editor
10	Effects	Twenty-four, ranked by how often they get used

Each one is explained, with pictures, in Aphexar Dock — How To Use.pdf.

Two things worth knowing on day one

If you see	It means
A message at the bottom	That strip is the status line. Every action reports what it did, and every failure says why and names the layer. A button that appears to do nothing while the strip stays silent is a bug worth reporting.
“the comp’s motion blur switch is off”	Layer motion blur renders nothing unless the composition switch is on too. The Composition row has it.
“Advanced 3D disables effects on 3D layers”	Not a Dock limitation — the Advanced 3D renderer genuinely switches effects off on 3D text and shape layers. Classic 3D does not.

06 Licence

Free to use, for personal and commercial work, with no fee and no royalty on anything you make with it. Full terms in LICENCE.txt.

Please share the download link rather than the files — that way people get the current version, and fixes actually reach them.

Aphexar Dock · free to use

Back to the Dock · Download as PDF