---
title: How to animate the elements on a slide
description: Choose how each element on a slide comes in, what it does on screen and how it leaves, then set the order, delays and durations of the animations.
canonical: https://postnitro.ai/docs/how-to/make-videos/animate-elements
---

# How To Animate The Elements On A Slide?

Every element on a slide (its title, text, pictures, list items, button and your branding) can have up to three animations:

- **In**: how it comes in.
- **Emphasis**: something it does while it's on screen: a pulse, a float or a wiggle. It starts once the element has come in, and repeats until the element leaves, with its **Out** or at the end of the slide, unless you set **Repeat**. **Ken Burns** slowly zooms in on a picture or the background and drifts it, once, until the element leaves.
- **Out**: how it leaves.

Animations are in **Video**, in the left menu. It opens on the whole video: click the slide's row at its top, or the chip at the top of a slide, to open that slide, then pick an element to open its animation. The path at the top, such as **Video › Slide 2 › Title**, takes you back up.

On a computer, the slide's timeline opens at the bottom, in the slide bar's place: click the timeline button on the slide bar, or **Open timeline** on a slide in **Video**. Its top row has **▶**, the slide and its time, **All at once**, **One by one** and **Cascade** to line the slide's animations up in one click, zoom, the whole video's length and **Hide timeline**. While it's open, each slide's own toolbar has the slide bar's buttons: move, duplicate, delete and add. Each element has a row, numbered in the order things come in and coloured as the element is on the slide, with its **In**, **Emphasis** and **Out** on it. The row of the element you picked, or of the bar you're dragging, is tinted in its colour. Each bar is placed against what its own row shows:

- An **In** starts at a time. Drag it to start earlier or later: the first time you do, the slide is placed by hand, the timeline says **Custom**, and every **In** stays where it is until you move it. **All at once**, **One by one** or **Cascade** lays the slide out again, and keeps it laid out as its text changes.
- An **Emphasis** plays once its element has come in: drag it anywhere between its **In** and its **Out**.
- An **Out** ends with the slide: drag it left to leave earlier, or its left end to make it longer.
- Drag a bar's end to make it longer or shorter, and the dark line at the slide's end to set how long the slide stays. The slide's last moments are shaded where the next slide comes in.
- On a laid-out slide, drag an element's name onto another to change the order things come in.
- Click a bar or a name to open that element's animation in **Video**; **Not animated · animate** starts one for an element that doesn't move yet.
- Drag along the ruler to see any moment, and click **Back to editing** to carry on.

Click **Hide timeline** to put it away.

## Steps

### Pick an element

With **Video** open, click the element on the slide, or its name in the timeline under the canvas. You can also select a text and click **Animate** on its toolbar. On a phone, tap it in the slide's list in **Video**, where elements that don't move yet come after the animations.

For elements that repeat, such as list items or grid cells, choose whether to animate **This one** or **All of them**.

### Choose an animation

Pick **In**, **Emphasis** or **Out**, then click an animation. It plays on the slide straight away, so you can see it.

![Pick an animation](https://postnitro.ai/docs/images/video/pick-an-animation.webp)

Text has a few more animations than other elements, such as **Typewriter** and **Wave**. Text with highlighted words (the text bar's **Highlight** or **Boxed**) also has **Highlight sweep**, which draws those words in like a marker, one after another. Text with numbers, such as an infographic's figures, has **Count up**, which counts them up from zero in the form you wrote them; years are left alone.

### Fine-tune it

Click **Configuration**, under the animations, to open the rest. It opens by itself for **Custom**, and once you've opened it, it stays open for every element until you close it or reload the page. There you can adjust:

- **Easing**: how the animation speeds up and slows down.
- **Text plays**: **Whole**, **By line**, **By word** or **By letter**.
- **Gap between parts**: the time between each line, word or letter.
- **Distance** and **Intensity**: how far it travels, and how strong it is.
- **Repeat** (emphasis only): a number of times, or **Until it leaves**, which a new emphasis starts with: until its **Out**, or the end of the slide.
- When it plays, and its **Duration**: an **In**'s **Starts at**, an **Emphasis**'s **After it comes in**, an **Out**'s **Before the end** (see [Set the order and timing](#set-the-order-and-timing)).

To take an animation off, click **Remove entrance**, **Remove emphasis** or **Remove exit**.

![Animation settings](https://postnitro.ai/docs/images/video/slide-tab-timeline.webp)

### Make your own

When no animation does quite what you want, click **Custom**, the last one. It starts as a simple rise for **In** and **Out**, or a gentle beat for **Emphasis**, and shows its **Keyframes**: points along the animation, from its start to its end.

- **Pick a keyframe** on the line, then set where the element is at that point: its **Opacity**, **Size**, **X** and **Y** (how far it has moved, in pixels; right and down are positive), **Rotation** and **Blur**.
- **Position** moves a keyframe along the animation.
- **Add** puts a new keyframe halfway to the next one, where the element already is then, so nothing changes until you edit it. **Remove** takes the picked one out.
- **Easing to the next** sets how it moves on to the next keyframe. Left empty, it follows the animation's **Easing**.

An **In** animation always ends where the element is in your design, so its last keyframe stays at rest, and **Out** plays it backwards. An **Emphasis** starts and ends at rest, so it can repeat smoothly.

On paid plans, Nitro AI can make custom animations too: describe the movement you want.

## Set the order and timing

On a computer, the timeline under the canvas shows each animation against the slide's time, in the order things come in. The ruler counts from the start of the slide.

- A slide is laid out, **All at once**, **One by one** or **Cascade**, until you place something by hand: then it's **Custom**. Pick one in the timeline's top row, or under **How things appear** in **Video**, to lay it out again.
- Click a bar or a name to open its animation in **Video**. There, an **In** has **Starts at**, the time it starts (giving it one places the slide by hand); an **Emphasis** has **After it comes in**; an **Out** has **Before the end**. Each has its **Duration**.
- Drag a bar to move it, or drag its end to change how long it plays. With a bar selected, the arrow keys move it, and **Shift** with the arrow keys changes how long it plays.
- On a laid-out slide, drag an element's name onto another to change the order things come in.
- To put the animation away, press **Esc**: **Video** goes back to the slide.

On a phone, **Video** lists the slide's animations under **Sequence**. Tap one to open it; on a laid-out slide, the up and down buttons change the order things come in.

## Save a sequence to use again

A slide's animations, its sequence, can be saved for your workspace and given to any slide of any design. In **Video**, open the slide and click **Your sequences**.

![Your sequences](https://postnitro.ai/docs/images/video/your-sequences.webp)

- **Save this sequence** keeps this slide's animations under a name you give them. It keeps the animations only: the slides you use it on keep their own length and transition.
- **Hover over a saved sequence** to see it play on the current slide. Nothing changes until you click.
- **Click a saved sequence** to give this slide its animations, element by element, as [Apply to other slides](https://postnitro.ai/docs/how-to/make-videos/set-slide-timing#apply-it-to-other-slides) does. It's one step to undo. To give it to the other slides as well, use **Apply to other slides** afterwards.
- The pencil renames a sequence, and the bin deletes it, after asking.

Everyone in your workspace sees the same saved sequences, and a rename or a delete is for all of them. Slides a sequence was used on keep their animations when it's deleted.

Saved sequences are part of paid plans. On the free plan, **Your sequences** carries a crown and offers the upgrade.

## Play it

Press **Space** to play the slide in place, and again to pause it. Click the slide or press **Esc** to go back to editing. To watch the whole video, click **Preview video**: see [Preview and download](https://postnitro.ai/docs/how-to/make-videos/preview-and-download).

> **Note:** Right-to-left text, and Chinese, Japanese and Korean text, comes in by line, word or letter in place, without moving. That way its lines break exactly where you see them in the editor.