Advanced animation patterns with Framer Motion

April 20, 2021 / 13 min read

Last Updated: August 4, 2022

I got ✨a lot✨ of positive feedback from my Guide to creating animations that spark joy with Framer Motion, and it's undeniable that this library has piqued many developers' interests in the world of web-based animations.

While I introduced in this previous post many of the foundational pieces that compose an animation, and how one can orchestrate multiple transitions very easily with Framer Motion, I did not touch upon many of the more advanced features that this library provides.

Ever wondered how to propagate animations throughout several components or to orchestrate complex layout transitions? Well, this article will tell you all about these advanced patterns and show you some of the great things one can accomplish with Framer Motion!

Propagation

One of the first advanced patterns I got to encounter when I tried to add some micro-interactions with Framer Motion on my projects is propagation. I quickly learned that it's possible to propagate changes of variants from a parent motion component to any child motion component. However, this got me confused at the beginning because it broke some of the mental models I originally had when it comes to defining animations.

Remember in my previous blog post when we learned that every Framer Motion Animation needed 3 properties (props) initial, animate, transition, to define a transition/animation? Well, for this pattern that's not entirely true.

Framer Motion allows variants to "flow down" through every motion child component as long as these motion components do not have an animate prop defined. Only the parent motion component, in this case, defines the animate prop. The children themselves only define the behavior they intent to have for those variants.

A great example where I used propagation on this blog is the "Featured" section on the home page of this blog. When you hover it, the individual cards "glow" and this effect is made possible by this pattern. To explain what really is happening under the hood, I built this little widget below where I reproduced this effect:

Hover me!

✨ It's magic! ✨

You can see that hovering (or tapping if you're on mobile) the card or even the label above it triggers the glow effect. What kind of sorcery is this?! By clicking on the "perspective" button, you can see what happens under the hood:

There's an "invisible" motion layer covering the card and the label. This layer holds the whileHover prop which sets the variant "hover"
The "glow" itself is a motion component as well, however, the only thing it defines is its own variants object with a hover key.

Thus when hovering this invisible layer, we toggle the "hover" variant and any child motion component having this variant define in their variants prop will detect this change and toggle the corresponding behavior.

Example of propagation pattern with Framer Motion

1
const CardWithGlow = () => {
2
  const glowVariants = {
3
    initial: {
4
      opacity: 0
5
    },
6
    hover: {
7
      opacity: 1
8
    }
9
  }
10

11
  return (
12
    // Parent sets the initial and whileHover variant keys
13
    <motion.div initial="initial" whileHover="hover">
14
      {/* child motion component sets variants that match the keys set by the parent to animate accordingly */}
15
      <motion.div variants={glowVariants} className="glow"/>
16
      <Card>
17
        <div>Some text on the card/div>
18
      </Card>
19
    </motion.div>
20
  )
21
}

Now let's apply what we learned about the propagation mechanism of Framer Motion! In the playground below you'll find a motion component with a "hover" animation. When hovering it, a little icon will show up on the right end side of that component. You can try to:

Modify the variant key used in the motion component wrapping the button and see that now that it defers from what's being set by the parent component, the animation does not trigger and the button is not visible on hover.
Set ananimate prop on the motion component that wraps the button and see that it now animates on its own and does not consume the variant set by the parent on hover.

import { styled } from '@stitches/react';
import { motion } from 'framer-motion';
import './scene.css';

const ListItem = styled(motion.li, {
  width: '100%',
  minWidth: '300px',
  background: 'hsla(222, 89%, 65%, 10%)',
  boxShadow: '0 0px 10px -6px rgba(0, 24, 40, 0.3)',
  borderRadius: '8px',
  padding: '8px',
  display: 'flex',
  alignItems: 'center',
  justifyContent: 'space-between',
  cursor: 'pointer',
  marginBottom: '0px',
  color: 'hsl(223, 15%, 65%)',
  fontSize: 18,
});

const Button = styled('button', {
  background: 'transparent',
  cursor: 'pointer',
  border: 'none',
  shadow: 'none',
  color: 'hsl(223, 15%, 65%)',
  display: 'flex',
});

const InfoBox = styled('div', {
  width: '50%',
});

const ARTICLES = [
  {
    category: 'swift',
    title: 'Intro to SwiftUI',
    description: 'An article with some SwitftUI basics',
    id: 1,
  },
];

const Item = (props) => {
  const { article } = props;

  const readButtonVariants = {
    hover: {
      opacity: 1,
    },
    // Uncomment the variant below and comment the variant above and notice the button will not show up on hover
    /*  hoverme: {
        opacity: 1,
      },
    */
    initial: {
      opacity: 0,
    },
    magic: {
      rotate: 360,
      opacity: 1,
    },
  };

  return (
    <ListItem layout initial="initial" whileHover="hover">
      <InfoBox>{article.title}</InfoBox>
      <motion.div
        // Uncomment me and notice the button now rotates and is always visible
        // animate="magic"
        variants={readButtonVariants}
        transition={{ duration: 0.25 }}
      >
        <Button
          aria-label="read article"
          title="Read article"
          onClick={(e) => e.preventDefault()}
        >
          &#8594;
        </Button>
      </motion.div>
    </ListItem>
  );
};

const Example = () => <Item article={ARTICLES[0]} />;

export default Example;

Animate components when they are unmounting

So far, we've only seen examples of animation being triggered either on mount or following some specific events like hover or tap. But what about triggering an animation right before a component unmounts? Some sort of "exit" transition?

Well, in this second part, we'll take a look at the Framer Motion feature that addresses this use case and also the one that impressed me the most: AnimatePresence!

I tried to implement some kind of exit animations before learning about AnimatePresence, but it was hacky and always required extra code to set a proper "transitional" state (like isClosing, isOpening) and toggle the corresponding animation of that state. As you can imagine, it was very error-prone.

A very hacky way to implement an exist animation without AnimatePresence

1
/**
2
This is mostly pseudo code, do not do this!
3
It's not good practice
4
**/
5

6
const MagicComponent = () => {
7
  const [hidden, setHidden] = React.useState(false);
8
  const [hidding, setHidding] = React.useState(false);
9

10
  const variants = {
11
    animate: (hidding) => ({
12
      opacity: hidding ? 0 : 1,
13
    })
14
    initial: {
15
      opacity: 1
16
    },
17
  }
18

19
  const hideButton = () => {
20
    setHidding(true);
21
    setTimeout(() => setHidden(true), 1500);
22
  }
23

24
  return (
25
    <motion.button
26
      initial="initial"
27
      animate="animate"
28
      variants={variants}
29
      onClick={hideButton}
30
      custom={hidding}
31
    >
32
      Click to hide
33
    </motion.button>
34
  )
35
}

On the other hand, AnimatePresence is extremely well thought of and easy to use. By simply wrapping any motion component in an AnimatePresence component, you'll have the ability to set an exit prop!

Example of use case for AnimatePresence

1
const MagicComponent = () => {
2
  const [hidden, setHidden] = React.useState(false);
3

4
  return (
5
    <AnimatePresence>
6
      {!hidden && (
7
        <motion.button
8
          initial={{ opacity: 1 }}
9
          exit={{ opacity: 0 }}
10
          onClick={() => setHidden(true)}
11
        >
12
          Click to hide
13
        </motion.button>
14
      )}
15
    </AnimatePresence>
16
  );
17
};

In the interactive widget below, I showcase 2 versions of the same component:

the one on the left is not wrapped in AnimatePresence
the second one, however, is wrapped

That's the only difference code-wise. But as you can see the difference is pretty striking!

Without AnimatePresence

🚀

With AnimatePresence

🚀

👉 Something I discovered while writing this article

To set the proper direction of the transition, left or right, depending on which button is pressed, I set a state while the user hovers the button which will change the direction of the transition accordingly (not the best implementation I know but it works 😄) Despite this working perfectly on the example on the right, the one that uses AnimatePresence, you may have noticed that on the example on the left, the transition kicks in just by hovering one of the buttons.

It seems that AnimatePresence keeps track of which motion component is rendered at a given time and throughout state changes.

I still need to investigate the inner workings of Framer Motion for that, but, despite it being a surprise to me, this behavior makes sense given the use case.

We now have a new awesome tool to use to make our transitions even better! It's time it a try in the playground below:

Try to remove the AnimatePresence component. Notice how this makes Framer Motion skip the animation specified in the exit prop.
Try to modify the animation defined in the exit prop. For example, you could make the whole component scale from 1 to 0 while it exit. (I already added the proper animation objects commented in the code below 😄)

import { styled } from '@stitches/react';
import { AnimatePresence, motion } from 'framer-motion';
import React from 'react';
import Pill from './Pill';
import './scene.css';

const List = styled(motion.ul, {
  padding: '16px',
  width: '350px',
  background: ' hsl(223, 15%, 10%)',
  borderRadius: '8px',
  display: 'grid',
  gap: '16px',
});


const ListItem = styled(motion.li, {
  minWidth: '300px',
  background: 'hsla(222, 89%, 65%, 10%)',
  boxShadow: '0 0px 10px -6px rgba(0, 24, 40, 0.3)',
  borderRadius: '8px',
  padding: '8px',
  display: 'flex',
  alignItems: 'center',
  justifyContent: 'space-between',
  cursor: 'pointer',
  marginBottom: '0px',
  color: 'hsl(223, 15%, 65%)',
  fontSize: 18,
});

const Button = styled('button', {
  background: 'transparent',
  cursor: 'pointer',
  border: 'none',
  shadow: 'none',
  color: 'hsl(223, 15%, 65%)',
  display: 'flex',
});

const InfoBox = styled('div', {
  width: '50%',
});

const FilterWrapper = styled('div', {
  marginBottom: '16px',
  input: {
    marginRight: '4px',
  },
  label: {
    marginRight: '4px',
  },
});

const ARTICLES = [
  {
    category: 'swift',
    title: 'Intro to SwiftUI',
    description: 'An article with some SwitftUI basics',
    id: 1,
  },
  {
    category: 'js',
    title: 'Awesome React stuff',
    description: 'My best React tips!',
    id: 2,
  },
  {
    category: 'js',
    title: 'Styled components magic',
    description: 'Get to know ways to use styled components',
    id: 3,
  },
  {
    category: 'ts',
    title: 'A guide to Typescript',
    description: 'Type your React components!',
    id: 4,
  },
];

const categoryToVariant = {
  js: 'warning',
  ts: 'info',
  swift: 'danger',
};

const Item = (props) => {
  const { article, showCategory } = props;

  const readButtonVariants = {
    hover: {
      opacity: 1,
    },
    initial: {
      opacity: 0,
    },
  };

  return (
    <ListItem initial="initial" whileHover="hover">
      <InfoBox>{article.title}</InfoBox>
      {/* Try to remove/comment the AnimatePresence component below! */}
      <AnimatePresence>
        {showCategory && (
          <motion.div
            initial={{ opacity: 0 }}
            // initial={{ opacity: 0, scale: 1}}
            animate={{ opacity: 1 }}
            exit={{ opacity: 0 }}
            // exit={{ opacity: 0, scale: 0, }}
          >
            <Pill variant={categoryToVariant[article.category]}>
              {article.category}
            </Pill>
          </motion.div>
        )}
      </AnimatePresence>
      <motion.div variants={readButtonVariants} transition={{ duration: 0.25 }}>
        <Button
          aria-label="read article"
          title="Read article"
          onClick={(e) => e.preventDefault()}
        >
          &#8594;
        </Button>
      </motion.div>
    </ListItem>
  );
};

const Component = () => {
  const [showCategory, setShowCategory] = React.useState(false);

  return (
    <>
      <FilterWrapper>
        <div>
          <input
            type="checkbox"
            id="showCategory"
            checked={showCategory}
            onChange={() => setShowCategory((prev) => !prev)}
          />
          <label htmlFor="showCategory">Show Category</label>
        </div>
      </FilterWrapper>
      <List>
        {ARTICLES.map((article) => (
          <Item
            key={article.id}
            article={article}
            showCategory={showCategory}
          />
        ))}
      </List>
    </>
  );
};

export default Component;

Layout animations

We now know how to:

propagate animations throughout a set of motion components
add an exit transition to a component so it can unmount gracefully

Those advanced patterns should give us the ability to craft some pretty slick transitions right? Well, wait until you hear more about how Framer Motion can handle layout animations!

What is a "layout animation"?

A layout animation is any animation touching layout related properties such as:

position properties
flex or grid properties
width or height
sorting elements

But to give you a little bit more of an idea of what I'm talking about here, let's try to take a look at the playground below that showcases 2 versions of the same component:

the first one animates justify-content property between flex-start and flex-end by simply using the patterns we only know so far: setting this property in the animation prop
the second one uses a new prop: layout. It's here set to true to tell Framer Motion that a "layout related property", and thus by extension the layout of the component, will change between rerenders. The properties themselves are simply defined in CSS as any developer would do normally when not using Framer Motion.

import { styled } from '@stitches/react';
import { AnimatePresence, motion } from 'framer-motion';
import React from 'react';
import './scene.css';

const SwitchWrapper1 = styled(motion.div, {
  width: '50px',
  height: '30px',
  borderRadius: '20px',
  cursor: 'pointer',
  display: 'flex',
});

const SwitchHandle1 = styled(motion.div, {
  background: '#fff',
  width: '30px',
  height: '30px',
  borderRadius: '50%',
});

// Attempt at a Switch motion component without layout animation: It simply does not work
const Switch1 = () => {
  const [active, setActive] = React.useState(false);

  const switchVariants = {
    initial: {
      backgroundColor: '#111',
    },
    animate: (active) => ({
      backgroundColor: active ? '#f90566' : '#111',
      justifyContent: active ? 'flex-end' : 'flex-start',
    }),
  };

  return (
    <SwitchWrapper1
      initial="initial"
      animate="animate"
      onClick={() => setActive((prev) => !prev)}
      variants={switchVariants}
      custom={active}
    >
      <SwitchHandle1 />
    </SwitchWrapper1>
  );
};

const SwitchWrapper2 = styled('div', {
  width: '50px',
  height: '30px',
  borderRadius: '20px',
  cursor: 'pointer',
  display: 'flex',
  background: '#111',
  justifyContent: 'flex-start',

  '&[data-isactive="true"]': {
    background: '#f90566',
    justifyContent: 'flex-end',
  },
});

const SwitchHandle2 = styled(motion.div, {
  background: '#fff',
  width: '30px',
  height: '30px',
  borderRadius: '50%',
});

// Simpler version of the Switch motion component using layout animation
const Switch2 = () => {
  const [active, setActive] = React.useState(false);

  return (
    <SwitchWrapper2
      data-isactive={active}
      onClick={() => setActive((prev) => !prev)}
    >
      <SwitchHandle2 layout />
    </SwitchWrapper2>
  );
};

const Example = () => (
  <div style={{ maxWidth: '300px' }}>
    <p>
      Switch 1: Attempt at animating justify-content in a Framer Motion animation
      object.
    </p>
    <Switch1 />
    <br />
    <p>
      Switch 2: Animating justify-content using layout animation and the layout prop.
    </p>
    <Switch2 />
  </div>
);

export default Example;

We can observe multiple things here:

The first example does not work, it looks here that Framer Motion can't transition between justify-content properties the same way you'd transition an opacity from 0 to 1 gracefully.
The second component however transitions as expected between the flex-start and flex-end property. By setting layout to true in the motion component, Framer Motion can transition the component's justify-content property smoothly.
Another advantage of the second component: it does not have as much of a "hard dependency" with Framer Motion as the first one. We could simply replace the motion.div with a simple div and the component itself would still work

Shared Layout Animation

We now know what layout animations are and how to leverage those for some specific use cases. But what happens if we start having layout animations that span several components?

In the more recent versions of Framer Motion, building shared layout animations has been greatly improved: the only thing we need to do is set a common layoutId prop to the components that are part of a shared layout animation.

Below, you'll find a widget that showcases an example of shared layout animation.

🐶
🐱
🐰
🐭
🐹
🐷
🐻
🦁
🦊
🐧
🐼
🐮

Use common layout ID

When clicking on one of the emojis in the example above you will notice that:

the border will gracefully move to the newly selected element when the common layoutId is enabled
the border will abruptly appear around the newly selected element when the common layoutId is disabled (i.e. not defined or different)

All we need to do to obtain this seemingly complex animation was to add a prop, that's it! ✨ In this example in particular, all I added is a common layoutId called border to every instance of the blue circle component.

Example of shared animate layout using the "layoutId" prop

1
const MagicWidgetComponent = () => {
2
  const [selectedID, setSelectedID] = React.useState('1');
3

4
  return (
5
    <ul>
6
      {items.map((item) => (
7
        <li
8
          style={{
9
            position: 'relative'
10
          }}
11
          key={item.id}
12
          onClick={() => setSelectedID(item.id)}
13
        >
14
          <Circle>{item.photo}</Circle>
15
          {selectedID === item.id && (
16
            <motion.div
17
              layoutId="border"
18
              style={{
19
                position: 'absolute',
20
                borderRadius: '50%',
21
                width: '48px',
22
                height: '48px',
23
                border: '4px solid blue';
24
              }}
25
            />
26
          )}
27
        </li>
28
      ))}
29
    </Grid>
30
  );
31
};

It's now time to give a try at what we just learned! This last example compiles all the previous playgrounds together to create this list component. This implementation includes:

using the layout prop on the ListItem component to animate reordering the list
using the layout prop on the list itself to handle resizing gracefully when items are expanded when clicked on
other instances of the layout prop used to prevent glitches during a layout animation (especially the ones involving changing the height of a list item)

You can try to:

comment out or remove the layout prop on the ListItem and see that now, reordering happens abruptly 👉 no more transition!
comment out or remove the LayoutGroup and notice how this affects all the layout animations
try to add the layout prop on the <Title/> component and see it gracefully adjusting when the height of an item changes

import { styled } from '@stitches/react';
import { AnimatePresence, LayoutGroup, motion } from 'framer-motion';
import React from 'react';
import Pill from './Pill';
import './scene.css';

const List = styled(motion.ul, {
  padding: '16px',
  width: '350px',
  background: ' hsl(223, 15%, 10%)',
  borderRadius: '8px',
  display: 'grid',
  gap: '16px',
});


const ListItem = styled(motion.li, {
  minWidth: '300px',
  background: 'hsla(222, 89%, 65%, 10%)',
  boxShadow: '0 0px 10px -6px rgba(0, 24, 40, 0.3)',
  borderRadius: '8px',
  padding: '8px',
  display: 'flex',
  alignItems: 'center',
  justifyContent: 'space-between',
  cursor: 'pointer',
  marginBottom: '0px',
  color: 'hsl(223, 15%, 65%)',
  fontSize: 18,
});

const Button = styled('button', {
  background: 'transparent',
  cursor: 'pointer',
  border: 'none',
  shadow: 'none',
  color: 'hsl(223, 15%, 65%)',
  display: 'flex',
});

const InfoBox = styled('div', {
  width: '50%',
});

const FilterWrapper = styled('div', {
  marginBottom: '16px',
  input: {
    marginRight: '4px',
  },
  label: {
    marginRight: '4px',
  },
});

const Title = motion.div;

const ARTICLES = [
  {
    category: 'swift',
    title: 'Intro to SwiftUI',
    description: 'An article with some SwitftUI basics',
    id: 1,
  },
  {
    category: 'js',
    title: 'Awesome React stuff',
    description: 'My best React tips!',
    id: 2,
  },
  {
    category: 'js',
    title: 'Styled components magic',
    description: 'Get to know ways to use styled components',
    id: 3,
  },
  {
    category: 'ts',
    title: 'A guide to Typescript',
    description: 'Type your React components!',
    id: 4,
  },
];

const categoryToVariant = {
  js: 'warning',
  ts: 'info',
  swift: 'danger',
};

const Item = (props) => {
  const { article, showCategory, expanded, onClick } = props;

  const readButtonVariants = {
    hover: {
      opacity: 1,
    },
    initial: {
      opacity: 0,
    },
  };

  return (
    <ListItem layout initial="initial" whileHover="hover" onClick={onClick}>
      <InfoBox>
        {/*
          Try to add the "layout" prop to this motion component
          and notice how it now gracefully moves as the list
          item expands
        */}
        <Title
        //layout
        >
          {article.title}
        </Title>
        <AnimatePresence>
          {expanded && (
            <motion.div
              style={{ fontSize: '12px' }}
              initial={{ opacity: 0 }}
              animate={{ opacity: 1 }}
              exit={{ opacity: 0 }}
            >
              {article.description}
            </motion.div>
          )}
        </AnimatePresence>
      </InfoBox>
      <AnimatePresence>
        {showCategory && (
          <motion.div
            layout
            initial={{ opacity: 0 }}
            animate={{ opacity: 1 }}
            exit={{ opacity: 0 }}
          >
            <Pill variant={categoryToVariant[article.category]}>
              {article.category}
            </Pill>
          </motion.div>
        )}
      </AnimatePresence>
      <motion.div
        layout
        variants={readButtonVariants}
        transition={{ duration: 0.25 }}
      >
        <Button
          aria-label="read article"
          title="Read article"
          onClick={(e) => e.preventDefault()}
        >
          &#8594;
        </Button>
      </motion.div>
    </ListItem>
  );
};

const Component = () => {
  const [showCategory, setShowCategory] = React.useState(false);
  const [sortBy, setSortBy] = React.useState('title');
  const [expanded, setExpanded] = React.useState(null);

  const onSortChange = (event) => setSortBy(event.target.value);

  const articlesToRender = ARTICLES.sort((a, b) => {
    const itemA = a[sortBy].toLowerCase();
    const itemB = b[sortBy].toLowerCase();

    if (itemA < itemB) {
      return -1;
    }
    if (itemA > itemB) {
      return 1;
    }
    return 0;
  });

  return (
    <>
      <FilterWrapper>
        <div>
          <input
            type="checkbox"
            id="showCategory2"
            checked={showCategory}
            onChange={() => setShowCategory((prev) => !prev)}
          />
          <label htmlFor="showCategory2">Show Category</label>
        </div>
        <div>
          Sort by:{' '}
          <input
            type="radio"
            id="title"
            name="sort"
            value="title"
            checked={sortBy === 'title'}
            onChange={onSortChange}
          />
          <label htmlFor="title">Title</label>
          <input
            type="radio"
            id="category"
            name="sort"
            value="category"
            checked={sortBy === 'category'}
            onChange={onSortChange}
          />
          <label htmlFor="category">Category</label>
        </div>
      </FilterWrapper>
      {/*
        Since each layout animation in this list affect each other's layout
        we have to wrap them in a `LayoutGroup`
        Try to remove it! You should see that:
        - without it concurrent layout animations when clicking on list 
        items end up being "choppy" 
        - with it concurrent layout animations when clicking on list items 
        are more graceful
      */}
      <LayoutGroup>
        <List layout>
          {articlesToRender.map((article) => (
            <Item
              key={article.id}
              expanded={expanded === article.id}
              onClick={() => setExpanded(article.id)}
              article={article}
              showCategory={showCategory}
            />
          ))}
        </List>
      </LayoutGroup>
    </>
  );
};

export default Component;

Conclusion

Congrats, you are now a Framer Motion expert 🎉! From propagating animations to orchestrating complex layout animations, we just went through some of the most advanced patterns that the library provides. We saw how well designed some of the tools provided are, and how easy it is thanks to those to implement complex transitions that would usually require either much more code or end up having a lot more undesirable side effects.

I really hope the examples provided in this blog post helped illustrate concepts that would otherwise be too hard to describe by text and that, most importantly, were fun for you to play with. As usual, do not hesitate to send me feedback on my writing, code, or examples, I'm always striving to improve this blog!

Did you come up with some cool animations after going through this guide?

Don't hesitate to send me a message showcasing your creations!

Want to see more examples?

The Framer Motion documentation has tons of those to play with on Codepen.

If you want to dig a bit deeper, below is the list of links to check out the implementations of the widgets featured in this article:

Liked this article? Share it with a friend on Twitter or support me to take on more ambitious projects to write about. Have a question, feedback or simply wish to contact me privately? Shoot me a DM and I'll do my best to get back to you.

Have a wonderful day.

– Maxime