MotionSlap vs FX Console: search is only the start
FX Console gave After Effects a fast search palette — and it's great. MotionSlap is a whole panel: 200+ tools, presets and expressions, plus Slap Search. Here's the difference for motion designers.
Every motion designer who’s used After Effects for more than a week knows FX Console. Video Copilot’s free plugin bolted a proper search bar onto AE — hit a shortcut, type a few letters, apply an effect or preset. It was such an obvious, immediate win that it’s genuinely hard to imagine After Effects without it, and to this day it’s one of the first things a lot of artists install on a fresh machine.
MotionSlap doesn’t argue with any of that. It starts there — and then keeps going.
Search is a feature, not a workflow
Here’s the thing about FX Console: it’s a fantastic search palette, but a search bar is one tool. It helps you find and apply effects and presets faster. It does not do the actual daily grind of motion graphics — the easing, the keyframe cleanup, the layer management, the shape and text work, the project tidy-up that eats most of your day. All of that still lives across a dozen scripts, panels, and bits of muscle memory.
So the honest framing is: FX Console makes finding things fast. It doesn’t change what you’re finding, or reduce how many separate tools you had to install to have anything worth finding.
MotionSlap is the panel that absorbs all of that. It’s 200+ tools, presets and expressions in one place, with Slap Search on top so you can summon any of them in three letters. It’s FX Console’s best idea — instant search — plus the 200 things you were still doing the hard way, in scattered panels, before.
What you get beyond a search bar
- 200+ tools — selection, layers, keyframes, easing, shapes, colors, text animations, project cleanup. Real capabilities, not just a way to find effects.
- Slap Search — the fast fuzzy search you love, but pointed at a full toolset (and your own scripts) instead of just AE’s effects list.
- Panel Builder — arrange your own layout, vertical sidebar or horizontal toolbar, grouped how you think.
- Make it yours — drop in your own scripts and expressions and they show up in Slap Search too, so your custom stuff is one keystroke away like everything else.
- $29, lifetime. No subscription. Adobe could never.
Do you even need both?
For a lot of artists, MotionSlap covers what they used FX Console for and then some — Slap Search is the fast search, just aimed at a bigger, more useful set. You can absolutely keep FX Console around (it’s free and great), but you may find you stop reaching for it once search and the tools live in the same panel.
MotionSlap vs FX Console
| MotionSlap | FX Console | |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Full 200+ tool panel | Search palette |
| Search | Slap Search | Yes (the original) |
| Tools/presets/expressions | 200+ built in | Bring your own |
| Custom panel layout | Panel Builder | No |
| Add your own scripts | Yes, searchable | No |
| Price | $29 lifetime | Free |
The honest take
FX Console is free and brilliant — genuinely keep loving it, and if all you want is faster effect search, it’s unbeatable value. But if you want the search and the 200 tools it was searching for, in one panel you can shape to your hands, plus room for your own scripts, that’s MotionSlap. Your workflow sucks. We fixed it. Stop crying. Start slapping.