Choose an animation API

The diagram below helps you decide what API to use to implement your animation.

Figure 1. Decision tree describing how to choose the appropriate animation API

Follow the decision tree questions below to choose which animation API is most appropriate for your use case:

• Is my animation more like art, consisting of many visual elements? i.e. SVGs or images
  • Yes: Does it have simple SVGs? i.e. an icon with micro-animations
    • Yes: AnimatedVectorDrawable
    • No: Third-party animation framework, i.e. Lottie
  • No: Does it need to repeat forever?
    • Yes: rememberInfiniteTransition
    • No: Is this a layout animation?
      • Yes: Changing between multiple composables that have different content?
        • Yes: With navigation-compose?
          • Yes: composable() withenterTransition and exitTransition set
          • No: AnimatedContent, Crossfade or Pager
        • No: Animating appearance / disappearance?
          • Yes: AnimatedVisibility or animateFloatAsState with Modifier.alpha()
          • No: Animating size?
            • Yes: Modifier.animateContentSize
            • No: Other layout property? ie offset, padding etc
              • Yes: See "Are the properties completely independent of each other?"
              • No: List item animations?
                • Yes: animateItemPlacement() (reorder and delete coming soon)
      • No: Do you need to animate multiple properties?
        • Yes: Are the properties completely independent of each other?
          • Yes: animate*AsState, for Text, use TextMotion.Animated
          • No: Start at the same time?
            • Yes: Yes: updateTransition with AnimatedVisibility, animateFloat, animateInt etc
            • No: Animatable with animateTo called with different timings (using suspend functions)
        • No: Does the animation have a set of predefined target values?
          • Yes: animate*AsState, for Text, use TextMotion.Animated
          • No: Gesture driven animation? Your animation is the only source of truth?
            • Yes: Animatable with animateTo / snapTo
            • No: One shot animation without state management?
              • Yes: AnimationState or animate
              • No: Answer not here? File a feature request

Download the PDF version of the diagram.