If you’ve worked with modern websites or mobile applications, you may have seen animations that feel smoother and more lightweight than traditional GIFs or videos.
Many of these animations use Lottie.
Lottie is an animation format that allows designers to export motion graphics as JSON data that can be rendered across websites, applications and other digital products.
Unlike traditional raster animation formats, Lottie can represent vector-based animation that remains sharp at different screen sizes.
How does Lottie work?
A typical Lottie workflow looks like this:
Design → Animate → Export → Integrate → Play
A designer may create an animation in Adobe After Effects and export it using a Lottie-compatible workflow.
The resulting JSON file contains information about the animation, including:
- Shapes
- Paths
- Colors
- Positions
- Scale
- Rotation
- Opacity
- Keyframes
- Timing
A developer can then load that animation using a Lottie player.
Modern Lottie tooling also supports .lottie packages alongside traditional JSON files.
GIFs are essentially sequences of raster images.
Lottie works differently.
Why use Lottie instead of GIF?
A Lottie animation can be rendered programmatically and can remain sharp at different resolutions.
This makes it particularly useful for:
- Websites
- Mobile applications
- SaaS products
- Onboarding screens
- Loading indicators
- UI microinteractions
- Empty states
- Success animations
- Error states
- Marketing pages
Where can you use Lottie?
Lottie can be used almost anywhere that supports an appropriate player.
For example:
Websites
Use Lottie for hero animations, loading states and interactive UI elements.
Mobile apps
Use animations for onboarding, confirmation states and microinteractions.
SaaS applications
Use animated empty states, success messages and feature demonstrations.
Marketing
Use motion to make landing pages more engaging.
Lottie vs video
Video is excellent for long-form visual content.
Lottie is often better suited to short UI and interface animations.
A video might be appropriate for a product demonstration.
A Lottie animation might be better for:
“Payment successful”
or:
“Your file has been uploaded.”
Where can you find Lottie animations?
You can create your own animations or download ready-made animation assets.
Lottie Wizard provides free and premium Lottie assets for designers and developers.
For example, you can use ready-made animations for:
- UI
- Loading
- Business
- Travel
- Healthcare
- Technology
- SaaS
- Onboarding
How do you preview a Lottie file?
If you’ve received a .json or .lottie file, you don’t necessarily need to install software to inspect it.
You can use the Lottie Wizard Online Lottie Viewer to upload or preview your animation.
This is particularly useful before integrating an animation into a production website or application.
Final thoughts
Lottie has become a useful format for delivering lightweight animation experiences across digital products.
If you’re a designer, developer or product designer, learning how to create, optimize and implement Lottie animations can make your workflow significantly easier.
Useful Lottie Wizard Free Tools:
