Agreed, basic workflow helpers like this would really help. After Effects is somewhat in the dark ages when it comes to stuff like this.

Yes please. Alt + drag on layers to duplicate would be such a smooth and efficient way to work.

On a related note, how come I DO get the "+" icon appearing next to my cursor when I do it, when it doesn't work ?

Come on guys! This is killing workflow. Its natural to work in this way across all other apps. Give it a modifer if it needs it, but please! This needs to go in ASAP! It seems so basic. You cant copy and paste keyframes across multiple layers! This would solve that as the keyframes would already be selected, no guessing which layers to copy and paste to.. PLEASE!!!

Please, please make some quality-of-life improvements to keyframes! This is a great idea, but really anything that can be done to make masses of keyframes easier to duplicate, identify, and adjust would save everyone so much headache!

Alt/Option + drag = duplicate for keyframes, would allow to duplicate keys on several layers at the same time, which would be two enhancements in one. I can't wait to see it happen.

Alt/Option + drag = duplicate, already works well for shapes inside a shape layer.

This is such a stupid bug. Can't believe this is still an issue in 2021. This request has almost 400 votes! On their "Resolved"-list they have implemented request with ONE vote!

Adobe Engineer Tim Kurkoski's solution to this request: "I'm wondering if this request needs to be split into two parts."

I think your paycheck should be split into two parts so that you can hire someone who will actually do their job

Please do that Adobe people. Thanks Sander for your time to visualize that

This is extremly important cause I do had developed the habit to option drag to copy but sometime I realize oh its after effects and it doesn't work the same.

It doesn’t work so don’t bother spending your money on this ****** space waster.

Another great idea that seems to have been ignored. This is app dev 101 at this point, not sure why small features like this aren't being implemented. Really wish there was a good After Effects competitor that solves these things.

@Adam, option+drag on markers splits them so they have a range. You can just move the playhead and quickly hit * on your number pad or ctrl+8 on Mac to place a new one.

This would be great if it also worked on markers too

needed

Needs to happen.

@Tim
Yes, these are two separate requests.
All I know is, I love being able to alt+drag keyframes in Premiere to duplicate them, and I find it bizarre and annoying that it's so much more tedious in After Effects. I just want the exact same functionality in AE. (Side note, I also really wish I could stretch keyframes in Premiere, like I can in AE!)
If someone wants to time-reverse their keyframes, they can still just do that with a keyboard shortcut for all selected frames AFTER they've been duplicated... I see no reason to combine those two actions into one, especially when we only have 3 modifier keys to work with. (I maybe misunderstood what you are getting at with #2.)

1. Yes.
2. Oh god yes.

:)

Thanks all for the great feedback so far.

As this discussion has progressed both here and on Twitter, I'm wondering if this request needs to be split into two parts. While I appreciate the universal approach of "Alt/Option + drag = duplicate", it sounds like there's a wider variety of behaviors desired here. So we'd need two different stories:

1. Alt/Option + drag = duplicate for layers, Project window items, shapes, effects, and other objects where it makes sense.
2. A larger story around better behaviors for duplicating or copy/pasting keyframes that covers the issues people have raised here regarding multi-layer cases, selection boxes, and modified paste behaviors like time-reverse.

Your thoughts?

+1 for more double tap keys...

To Tim's point about modifiers being exhausted... The visual shortcut customizer was a welcome addition to my personal workflow, however I also found the same problem the Ae team is having. Most modifiers are already used. I found myself wanting access to add custom quick double-letter shortcuts.

In this case for drag and duplicate, a unique/new hold on second keypress might work. So' Alt' then hold a quick second 'Alt' in succession + drag would active the duplication.

More broadly though it seems to be the problem of keyboard UI. I've seen iPad and scripts used to add extra keys. Wacom keys. Color grading as a practice has its own keyboard. Or C4D's submenus, opening up various combinations of quick keypresses as shortcuts... Not sure what's best but I feel like as more great feature are added to Ae, we'll be wanting more shortcuts, which are in short supply.

Look at Cinema. Time stretch as an actual box. Then option is no longer needed for that so opt+drag can duplicate keyframes. This would also allow us to reverse a group of keys properly.

The behavior definitely sounds useful, and any time we can achieve consistency with other Adobe apps is always nice.

I use alt-dragging (to "accordion" keys) relatively frequently (and also use ctrl+alt+click to toggle Hold fairly frequently), but I feel like I might agree with Steve that Ctrl+Alt+Click might be negotiable. That said, this probably means I'm suggesting changing TWO existing behaviors (alt+drag becomes Duplicate, ctrl+alt+drag becomes "accordion"), which sounds insane.

As I was typing this, I wonder if I've perhaps stumbled onto something - maybe I'm crazy, but would it be possible to hold the D key (for, you know, *D*uplicate) to accomplish this? While the key is different, the behavior is in line with other Adobe apps. As AE is already such a complex program, users are used to getting similar behaviors, but with different hotkeys... (It's probably not possible to separate this from the existing functionality of D to "Scroll to current time," is it? Would this be an easier change to swallow?)

+1 for this needing to work for keys on multiple layers at once.

+1 for being able to add another modifier key to reverse the copied keys.

+1 for being able to force the keys to sit on exact frames.

+1 for a bounding box that allows you to both see what you're doing and intuitively manipulate the group of keys (similar to behavior within the Graph Editor).