You know the feeling. You open an After Effects project and it is 500 layers deep with no folders in sight, because you have been editing and animating like a crazy person, dragging in new assets and never once stopping to tidy up. Now you actually need to find something, or hand the project to someone else, and the panic sets in.
Organizer is the Filmit plugin that cleans that mess up fast. One click sorts your entire After Effects project panel into folders by type, and the rest of the panel handles batch renaming, layer visibility, selection, label colors, and locks. This guide walks through every tab in the same order as the video, from the first sort to the last lock.
This video may reference an older version of Organizer. Features and UI may have changed since recording.
What is Organizer?
Organizer is a project and layer organizer that lives inside After Effects. The Sort tab files your project panel into folders by type and cleans up what is left over. The Rename tab batch renames comps and layers, with a preview before anything changes. The Layers tab toggles visibility and selects layers by type, and the Labels tab recolors and locks layers in bulk. It understands many different layer types and many different file types, so it can organize all of it for you.
It installs through Filmit Studio, the free companion app for Windows and macOS. On a normal monitor the whole panel fits on screen as one tall strip you can dock beside your project panel and treat like a toolkit.
Sort the whole project panel in one click
The demo project is the familiar mess: GIFs, solids, comps, and imported assets all stacked on top of each other with no structure. Click Sort by Type and Organizer moves everything into folders for you. A few seconds later the panel reads like a clean archive, with Compositions, Footage, Images, and Solids folders and the right items inside each one.
That is the core of the plugin. You do not configure anything, you do not drag a single item, and you do not have to decide where things go. Organizer recognizes what each item is and files it where it belongs.
Pro Tip: Make Sort by Type the last click of a messy session. It costs you nothing in the moment, and the next time you open the project you start from folders instead of a wall of loose items.
Flatten empty folders and the other sort tools
Because Sort by Type moves items out of your old folders, the cleanup can leave empty folders scattered through the panel. The Flatten Empty Folders button clears them in one click, so the cleanup actually finishes.
The Sort tab also carries a row of simple layer buttons. Highlight your layers and you can reverse the layer order, sort by in point, or sort A to Z and Z to A. You will not need them every day, but when you do, they are one click instead of a manual reshuffle.
Sorting is also where Organizer is headed next. The current Sort by Type files things into a structure we like, and a much more granular, customizable system is coming in v2, so the folders can match the way you actually work.
Batch rename with find and replace
The Rename tab is built around one habit: preview first, apply second. The demo project has comps named comp 1, comp 2, and comp 3. Type comp in the find field, type the new text, and hit Preview. Organizer shows exactly what every name will become before anything changes. Click Apply Rename and all of them update at once.
One thing worth noticing: find and replace matches everything with that text in its name, not just the items you had in mind. In the video it renames the three comps and everything else with comp in the name too. That reach is exactly why the preview step exists.
Pro Tip: Read the preview list before you click Apply Rename. Replace hits every match, so the preview is your chance to catch a name you did not mean to change.
Numbering, prefixes, case, and name cleanup
The rest of the Rename tab covers the renaming jobs editors hit constantly. Number turns a selection into a clean sequence: set a base name like layer, a start number, and padding, highlight your layers, preview, and they all become numbered layer names, one through ten in the demo. Prefix and suffix stamps text onto the front or back of every selected name, like putting main in front of a whole set of layers in a single apply.
Case switches a selection between uppercase, lowercase, title case, and so on, so one preview turns every selected layer fully uppercase at once. Strip removes trailing numbers, turning names like solid 1 and comp 1 into solid and comp, which is perfect after duplicates have stacked numbers onto everything. And Source resets renamed layers back to their original source names, the fastest way to walk back a naming experiment.
Toggle and select layers by type
The Layers tab is for the moments you need to change a lot of layers at once. The visibility buttons toggle whole layer types: click text and every text layer in the comp turns off, click again and they all come back. The same toggles work for adjustment layers and the rest, and Hide All and Show All cover the whole comp. If you had 500 text layers in one composition and needed them off, that is one click instead of an afternoon.
Selection works the same way. Click a type to select every layer of that kind, hold Shift to multi select across types, or use Select All and Deselect All. It is the fastest way to grab exactly the layers you want before a label, a lock, or any other bulk change.
Labels and locks in bulk
By default After Effects gives every layer of a type the same label color, so your text layers all look identical and the timeline tells you nothing at a glance. The Labels tab fixes that in bulk. Select your text layers and label them gray, select everything and try pink or purple, then build out a real system with red, yellow, and the rest. The whole selection recolors instantly, so labeling multiple layers at once takes seconds.
Lock works the same way. Lock layers in bulk, unlock them in bulk, and toggle them on and off without hunting for tiny padlock icons down the timeline.
Pro Tip: Combine the tabs. Select a layer type on the Layers tab, then jump to Labels and recolor or lock the whole selection. Two clicks turn an unreadable timeline into one that explains itself.
Key takeaways
Organizer turns project cleanup in After Effects from an hour of dragging into a few clicks from one panel.
Sort by Type files comps, footage, images, and solids into folders automatically.
Clear the leftover empty folders so the cleanup actually finishes.
Find and replace, numbering, prefixes, case, and strip, all previewed before you apply.
Toggle visibility and select layers by type, even hundreds at a time.
Recolor and lock whole selections so the timeline reads at a glance.
Why I built Organizer
Organizer exists because of all the projects I did not organize. Deadline editing is messy by nature. You drag in assets, duplicate comps, spin up solids, and promise yourself you will clean it up later, and later never comes. The next person to open that project, usually future you, pays for it. I wanted cleanup to cost one click so it would actually happen.
It is also a plugin we keep building. The more granular, customizable sort is the headline of v2, and updates take a while because we test them until they are actually worth shipping. If there is something you want Organizer to do, hit the settings tab inside the panel to request a feature or reach support, or join our Discord and tag me directly. The roadmap comes from how editors actually work.
Get started with Filmit
Organizer installs through Filmit Studio, the free app that manages every Filmit plugin for After Effects and Premiere Pro. One install puts Organizer in your editor, and the same app keeps it updated.
Once the project panel is clean, the rest of the suite keeps the momentum going. TextPilot does for text what Organizer does for your project, scanning every comp so you can edit, restyle, and fix text layers from one list. The whole toolkit runs under one subscription, always updated.
