Panels and features

Every panel and feature in the editor, organized by area. For the JSON fields each panel edits, see Scene settings and Objects; for the animation model, see Animations.

Canvas & viewport

The main 2D/3D drawing surface (CanvasArea → CanvasStage, with GridLayer under it).

Snapping (magnet icon + popover): a master toggle plus five independent snap targets — Grid, Increment, Vertex, Edge, Face. Grid/Increment round movement to a step (default 0.25, adjustable); Vertex/Edge/Face snap to other objects' geometry.

Viewport control bar (bottom-right): grid toggle, snap popover, 3D view toggle (hidden on mobile), zoom out / zoom % / zoom in, "Fit frame."

Tool strip (top-left): Select (V), Pan (H), Camera on/off (C), Orbit (O, 3D view only), Freehand pencil (B), and Measure (R). Each is a toggle — press the same key or button again to return to Select. See Canvas tools for how each one behaves.

Right-click context menu on an object: Edit text…/Edit formula… (double-click shortcut), Ask AI about this…, Animate quick-picks (Fade In / Pop In / Create / Pulse / Highlight / Fade Out), Duplicate, Copy, Bring forward, Send backward, Group, Lock/Unlock, Hide/Show, Delete.

On empty canvas: Ask AI to build something…, Paste, Select all, Fit frame.

Shapes dragged from the Object Library drop exactly at the cursor, unprojected onto the 3D ground plane when the camera is in 3D.

3D camera gizmo: drag the dashed frame border to move the shot (X/Y); drag the camera body to orbit (φ/θ); drag the height handle to raise/lower (Z); drag the diamond dolly handle along the camera axis to zoom. All of these auto-key at the playhead. An optional safe-area overlay (title-safe box + rule-of-thirds) shows when camera3d.safeArea is on.

Inspector

Tabs shown depend on selection. Single object: Move, Style, Shape, Anim, ƒx (Formulas), Info, plus Phys for 3D solids with physics applicable. Multi-selection: only Move and Style. Groups hide Style (no fill/stroke of their own) and default to Move.

No selection shows Scene Settings instead (render settings, camera defaults, lights, environment, simulation — see Scene settings). Selecting the Camera tool shows a dedicated camera inspector: view presets (¾, Front, Side, Top), φ/θ/spin, position/rotation/zoom, a Follow dropdown (2D only — locks the camera to another object, see Scene settings), a collapsed Cinematic section (safe-area guides, FOV, depth of field, near/far clip), recenter/reset buttons, and a Keyframe button that stamps a camera event at the playhead.

The same controls appear throughout the inspector: number fields whose label can be dragged to scrub the value (hold Shift for a bigger step), colour swatches with a hex field and a "remove colour" option, sliders, checkboxes, and collapsible sections.

Timeline

One track per scene object (reverse of layer order), a fixed Camera track, and a ♪ Music section (one row per audio clip) when audio exists. Each object track expands to one lane per animation event; overlapping events auto-stack into separate lanes.

Right-click a clip: Duplicate after, Copy, Mute/Unmute, Delete (all pluralize when multiple clips are selected). Right-click an empty lane: Paste (shows the target time, disabled if clipboard is empty or camera/object type mismatches).

♪ Music clips: each audio clip draws its actual waveform (decoded client-side via the Web Audio API, cached per asset) instead of a plain color bar. Double-click the waveform to drop a narration marker at that point in the source file — a small flag, independent of the timeline's own chapter markers, that stays glued to its word when the clip is later dragged or trimmed. Drag a narration marker to move it, double-click to rename, right-click to delete. Any animation event's Start-time field then gets a Snap to dropdown listing every narration marker across every audio track — picking one sets the event's start to exactly that marker's scene time, instead of eyeballing seconds against the waveform. See Sync animations to a voiceover.

Graph Editor tab: next to the Timeline tab in the same bottom panel, a curve-based view of the same property keyframes — every numeric animation plotted as a value-over-time curve instead of a clip bar, with draggable from/to endpoints. See Fine-tune motion in the Graph Editor.

Blocked combinations: some animation pairings are rejected outright rather than silently producing a broken render — two overlapping transforms on the same object, a replacing transform (ReplacementTransform, TransformMatchingTex/Shapes, FadeTransform) overlapping anything else on that object, two overlapping entrances/exits, or MoveAlongPath overlapping another position-driving event. Trying to create or drag a clip into one of these shows a toast explaining why instead of the edit going through.

Sidebar

Four tabs: Insert (Object Library), Templates, Layers, AI — plus a fifth, Cloud renders, that appears only when a local Render Agent is detected.

Layers panel: reverse objectOrder (top row = frontmost); filter box matches name or type; drag-and-drop reorder; collapsible groups; double-click to rename; per-row Duplicate/Delete/Lock/Show icons and an animation-count badge. Canvas-studio drawings never appear here (separate workspace).

Object Library: search by label, type name, or hint text (Enter inserts the first match). Ten collapsible sections — Text & Math, Shapes, 3D Solids, 3D Math & Graphs, Lines & Arrows, Coordinate Systems, Linear Algebra, Data & Code (now including Box plot), Teaching, Media (now including Video, alongside Image and SVG) — plus a "Recent" strip of up to six recently-used shapes. Entries are click-to-insert or drag-to-canvas; 3D sections are hidden on mobile. A Music & Audio block uploads mp3/wav/ogg/m4a, dropping the clip onto the timeline at the playhead.

Templates panel: a collapsible Brand kit card at the top, then four sections — My templates (saved locally, rename/export/delete/import as JSON), Motion templates (single pieces — a title, a lower-third, a formula reveal — inserted non-destructively at the playhead), Recipes (multi-step compositions — several templates plus camera moves chained together, e.g. "3D showcase" or "Video opener," shown as numbered step chips), and Sample scenes (replace the whole project after a confirmation, since it's destructive — autosave keeps a prior copy).

Brand kit: a saved palette (accent/secondary/warn/panel/text colors), a default font, and text/stroke/corner-radius scale, stored per-browser so it follows you across projects. Once turned on, every Motion template, camera template, and recipe you insert from then on uses these colors and sizes instead of the built-in demo palette — existing objects are untouched, only what you insert after enabling it.

Toolbar

Left to right: project name (inline rename), unsaved-changes indicator, Tools (New project, Import project…/Export project as a .manimstudio file, History & versions, Compare versions…, Measure, Export frame), More (standalone actions like Live Parameter), Undo/Redo, a team dock (only for Team/Ultra accounts), Preview (fullscreen playback), Render, Share (a shareable link, separate from exporting a file), and Workspace — an apps-grid launcher in the corner holding Editor ⇄ Canvas mode, Code view (the generated Python), Settings, language toggle (EN/UZ), and theme toggle.

Command palette

Ctrl+K opens a fuzzy-search palette over every action in the app — works even while a text field has focus. Type space-separated words; all words must appear (in any order) across the command's title, group, and keywords for it to match, with word-start matches ranked above mid-string ones.

Groups: Edit (undo/redo/duplicate/copy/paste/select all/delete/group/ungroup), Align (edges + distribute), View (grid/snapping/2D-3D/zoom), Keyframes (toggle auto-keyframe), Playback (play-pause/jump to start), Tools (select/pan/camera/Canvas studio), Panels (library/templates/layers/AI/code view/fullscreen preview/shortcuts/docs), Project (save/export frame/language), and Insert (one entry per object type).

Canvas studio

A separate drawing workspace (CreateShell), entered via the Workspace launcher's Editor ⇄ Canvas switch, the P shortcut, or the command palette. Objects created here are tagged to the canvas workspace and never appear in — or render alongside — the main scene editor; each workspace renders independently (see Editor vs. Canvas studio).

Tools: Pen (P, click to add anchors, click the first point to close), Pencil (freehand, smoothed into an editable path on release), Select/edit-points (V, drag anchors and handles; double-click an anchor toggles corner/smooth), Pan (H).

Shape stamps: Rectangle, Ellipse, Triangle, Star — each inserted as an editable path.

Math symbol palette: 16 fixed symbols (π, ∑, ∫, √, ∞, α, β, θ, λ, Δ, ∂, ≠, ≤, →, ×, ÷), each inserting a ready-made formula object.

SVG import: parses an uploaded .svg into editable paths, up to 80 shapes per file in a single undo step, preserving fill/stroke/name/closed-state per shape. Arcs convert to real cubic Bézier curves, and transform attributes (translate/rotate/scale/skew/matrix, on the element or any ancestor <g>) are composed and applied — see Import an SVG.

Point editing operations: Smooth all, Corner all, Flip H, Flip V, Subdivide (doubles points per segment), Simplify (removes near-collinear points), −1 pt (pop the last node). Alt+click a point deletes it; double-click a point toggles corner/smooth; double-click the curve inserts a point.

3D controls for paths: Z (positionZ), RX (rotationX), RY (rotationY) — each keyframeable. Giving a drawing any depth or 3D rotation switches its render to a 3D scene; the 2D canvas keeps previewing flat until you render.

Point-animation presets — apply to every anchor of the selected path, staggered:

Each preset takes a duration, a per-point stagger ("Lag"), and an amplitude ("Amp").

Record / auto-keyframe mode

Toggled from the timeline's record button or the command palette. While on, changing any animatable property mid-playback creates or extends a keyframe automatically instead of requiring manual ◆ diamonds: if the playhead falls inside an existing event for that property, the event's end value is retargeted; otherwise a new event is created running from the property's last keyframe (or scene start) to the current playhead, with smooth easing. No-ops in the first 0.05s of the timeline. See Keyframe any property for the manual workflow this complements.

Align & distribute

Available from the Move tab (multi-selection) and the command palette. Align: left / center / right (horizontal edges), top / center / bottom (vertical edges) — computed from each shape's actual half-extents, not just its anchor point; rotation is ignored. Distribute: evenly spaces object centers along an axis, keeping the first and last object fixed; needs at least 3 objects.

Frame export (image)

Saves the playhead's frame as an image. Press ShiftS or use Tools ▸ Save frame as image… to open the dialog.

You choose the format (PNG, JPG, or WebP), the shape (the scene's own frame, or 16:9 / 9:16 / 1:1 / 4:3, cropped to fit), and the width (1280, 1920, 2560, or 3840 for 4K). Turning off Include the background gives a transparent PNG. A Copy button puts the image straight on the clipboard instead of downloading it.

Formulas are captured as properly typeset maths, and 3D objects are included and redrawn at full quality, so a 4K export stays sharp. A small Manim Studio mark sits in the bottom corner, and the file is named like Manim Studio - My Scene - 3.5s.png.

Share

Share, next to Render, creates a link to a live, interactive view of the scene — not the editor. Visitors get the scene plus only what you allow, chosen with five toggles: play the animation, turn 3D scenes around, zoom and pan, open their own copy, and see the Manim code.

You can also expose specific numbers from the scene for visitors to change and watch the scene respond. That is the only thing they can alter — visitors can never move, restyle, or delete an object.

The viewer page shows your name and profile photo so people know whose scene it is, and offers a sign-up button to anyone not signed in. A shared scene is a frozen copy: editing your project afterwards doesn't change what visitors see, and changing the permissions means creating a new link. See Share a scene with a link.

AI panel

A chat-based scene designer. Describe a video in plain language; the assistant builds it out of ordinary editor objects and animations, so the result stays fully editable and undoable.

Pipeline: a designer pass produces a scene spec (objects, updates, deletes, animations) as one JSON object; for non-trivial specs, a reviewer pass re-checks geometry, bounds, and style arithmetically and returns a corrected spec; a final deterministic pass fixes what a model shouldn't be trusted with — squares rebuilt to have equal sides, oversized stroke widths/font sizes clamped, and the whole layout scaled down if anything falls outside the frame.

Mentions: @Name references an existing (or insertable) object by name with autocomplete; #Name references an animation name. Both render as chips in the chat.

Response types: question (the assistant asks something first — always required before starting a brand-new video without a stated format), scene (an edit applied to the project), or message (plain advice, no scene change).

Rate limit: per-plan requests per day, reset at midnight — 10 on Free, 150 on Pro, 500 on Team; the panel shows a remaining-count meter.

Preview player

Fullscreen playback (PreviewPlayer) starting from time 0, entered via the toolbar's Preview button. Space plays/pauses; Escape or exiting fullscreen closes it. Renders letterboxed to the project's aspect ratio with a watermark badge. Its Download button re-plays the full timeline while recording the canvas to a .webm file via MediaRecorder, compositing in the 3D layer and falling back to canvas-text for LaTeX during the capture.

Render dialog

Resolution/quality presets, output formats, and frame rate options are documented in full in Render formats.

Onboarding tour

A 14-step spotlight tour (Welcome → Command palette → Insert & Layers → Templates & Recipes → Build with AI → Canvas → Undo/copy/duplicate → Inspector tabs → Timeline → Record mode → Preview → Render → Code view → a closing shortcut tip), shown automatically on first visit on desktop, and restartable from the status bar's ? button.

Team workspace

A toolbar chip (visible only to accounts on an active Team plan, or Ultra) opens a floating dock with realtime Chat, shared Tasks, and Members/presence. Fully documented in Team workspace.

For the full shortcut list, see Keyboard shortcuts. For render/camera/lighting/physics fields, see Scene settings.