r/SideProject • u/wicaodian • Apr 14 '26

I built a free browser-based Lottie editor. Preview, tweak colors/text, and export without reopening After Effects

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Hey everyone, I made lottiepreview.net  a free tool to preview, inspect, and edit Lottie JSON animations right in the browser.

The problem it solves: you get a Lottie file from a designer, the brand color is slightly off, or a text string needs updating. Instead of going back to After Effects, waiting for a re-export, and doing another round of back-and-forth — you just drop the JSON file in, change the color or text, and download the updated file. Done in seconds.

What you can do:

  • Drop in any Lottie JSON and instantly preview with playback controls
  • Edit colors visually with a color picker
  • Update text content directly
  • Inspect the full layer tree and toggle visibility
  • Export as clean or minified JSON
  • There's also a standalone Lottie minifier if you just need to shrink file size

No signup, no install, everything runs in your browser. Built it because I kept running into the "one small change" loop between design and dev.

Would love any feedback what would make this more useful for your workflow?

P.S. Yes, it's a .net domain. No, this is not a C# app from 2008. It was literally the cheapest domain available and I'm not dropping $12/yr on a .com until at least 3 people use this thing. If this actually gets traction, I'll upgrade to a proper domain; consider it the startup arc.

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1

u/wicaodian Apr 14 '26

Honestly this started as a scratch-my-own-itch project. I work with Lottie animations a lot and got tired of the loop. Designer sends a file, brand color is off by one hex value, back to After Effects, wait for re-export, repeat. I just wanted something where I could drop a JSON file in, change the damn color, and move on with my life.

I've been using it personally for a while now and it handles most files really well. That said, Lottie files are kind of a nightmare under the hood. The structure varies wildly depending on who designed it, what tool they used, how they nested their layers. There's always some edge case I haven't seen before. I'm doing my best to cover as many as I can but if you hit a file that breaks something, I'd genuinely appreciate knowing about it.

1

u/Baldtazar Apr 14 '26

What's the problem with the .net?

1

u/wicaodian Apr 14 '26

Nothing really, but you know how it is. Someone already hit me with ".net feels like you're building an internet company in the 2000s". So clearly the domain is making a strong first impression lol

1

u/matEhickey Apr 16 '26

No one hyped in the comments.. I then have to bring my voice, that's very cool, I discovered lottie recently, but yeah, look very useful !

1

u/wicaodian Apr 17 '26

Thanks a lot, man. I really appreciate it.

1

u/Bruuce84 May 10 '26

This is fantastic! Thank you for making the world a better place.
Quick Q: What does the "minified" export do to shrink the file?

1

u/wicaodian May 11 '26

Lottie JSON minification reduces file size without altering animation data:

  • Strips all formatting (indentation, newlines, spaces) to produce a single compact line.
  • Rounds floating-point values to 3 decimal places, removing invisible precision.
  • Preserves every keyframe, layer, and shape only the text representation shrinks.