After Effects 2025 – CEP Removal and UXP Panel Support Issue

UXP Developer Tool
1

Hello Adobe After Effects Team,

I am writing to report and seek clarification regarding a critical extensibility issue in After Effects 2025 on Windows 11 Pro 25H2.

Summary of the Issue

After a clean installation of:

  • Windows 11 Pro 25H2 (Build 26200.x)

  • After Effects 2025 (latest Creative Cloud version)

I observed that CEP (Extensions Legacy) is completely unavailable:

  • Window → Extensions (Legacy) no longer exists

  • Registry keys (PlayerDebugMode, AllowDevelopmentWithoutDevLicense, etc.) are correctly set

  • System restart performed

  • Result: CEP panels cannot be loaded at all

This suggests that CEP support is fully disabled or removed in AE 2025, not merely deprecated.

UXP Situation in After Effects

As CEP is no longer available, I attempted to migrate to UXP, which Adobe recommends as the modern extensibility platform.

However, in practice:

  • UXP panels do not load or appear in After Effects

  • UXP Developer Tool shows plugins as added, but Load remains inactive or panels never appear in AE

  • Identical UXP setups work correctly in Photoshop and Illustrator

  • This behavior persists across clean installs and minimal test plugins

This strongly indicates that UXP panel support for After Effects is currently incomplete or unstable, despite being presented as the forward-looking solution.

Impact

This creates a blocking situation for developers:

  • CEP is no longer usable in AE 2025

  • UXP is not yet functionally viable for AE panel development

  • There is no officially supported path to build and deploy custom AE panels on the current version

Questions

  1. Is CEP intentionally and permanently disabled in After Effects 2025?

  2. What is the current official status of UXP panel support for After Effects?

  3. Is there a recommended version of After Effects for developers who need stable panel extensibility today?

  4. Is there a roadmap or timeline for full UXP support parity in After Effects?

This issue significantly affects third-party developers and internal tool creators, and clearer guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time and for any clarification you can provide.

Kind regards,
[Your Name]
[Your role, if any – e.g. Motion Designer / Plugin Developer]
[Optional: Company / Studio name]

1 Like
2

AE doesn’t have UXP yet, CEP still is the way

you don’t see the extensions panel likely because you don’t have any CEP extensions installed/recognized by the AE. If you are trying to install yours, check the manifest to match it with the version

3

As Window → Extensions (Legacy) is displayed only on Photoshop,
Other Applications including AfterEffects simply display “Extension” without “Legacy”.
And now, Illustrator doesn’t support UXP.
Please check your environment again.
In my environment, CEP on AfterEffects completely works as well.