Troubleshooting
The recurring "why is it doing that" questions, with short, direct answers.
The companion and comp-reading features
The pickwhip is empty, or comp/layer readouts are missing. The native companion isn't installed or paired. Open Settings → Companion and Install (then relaunch AE). Without it, the heavy comp-reading features stay quiet. If you see a "companion required" error right after switching back into AE, click Refresh in Settings → Companion.
The pickwhip's Compositions button says a companion update is required. Your installed companion can read the composition you have open but can't list the whole project. Open Settings → Companion, click Update, and relaunch After Effects. Everything else in the pickwhip keeps working meanwhile. A related notice — "This composition's live values need a newer eXLib companion" — means the comp browses fine and only its sampled values need the update.
Autocomplete isn't suggesting my layer/effect names inside layer("…").
Live composition names require a host connection, populated by the native companion.
Make sure a comp is open and the companion is installed. Your own declared symbols and
AE's globals still complete regardless.
The first time you use a "reveal in timeline" gesture, macOS may ask you to allow After Effects under System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility. This is expected — when AE doesn't expose a menu command for the reveal, the companion finishes the jump by synthesizing the same keystroke you'd press yourself, and macOS requires that permission for synthesized keystrokes. Grant it once for After Effects (not eXLib) and every reveal works from then on. Until it's granted, reveals still select the property in AE — nothing breaks, the last step is just manual.
Diagnostics and hovers
My expression flashes red while I'm still typing it.
It shouldn't, for structural-incompleteness cases — those are grace-suppressed on the
active line for about 1.5 seconds. If a real error shows (an undefined variable, a
const reassignment), that's intentional and never suppressed.
There are too many style/performance nags. Open Settings → Diagnostics and turn off the category you don't want (Style suggestions, for example), or drill into Advanced to silence a single rule code. Errors can't be hidden this way. Changes apply live.
Hovers are too verbose. Uncheck Educational hovers in Settings → Diagnostics for terse, signature-only hovers instead.
Applying to the wrong property
I keep applying to the wrong property as my selection changes. Pin your target: ⌘⇧-click the property's leaf in the pickwhip (open it with ⌃⌘R). Apply and Audition from that tab then always land on the pinned property — shown by the amber Apply button and the status-bar pin chip — until you unpin it (×). See Pinning an Apply Target for the full model.
Pins that no longer resolve
My Audition/Apply failed and named a property I thought I'd removed. That's a dead pin: the active tab's pinned property no longer resolves, because its layer or effect is gone. eXLib never silently falls back to your live AE selection when that happens — unpin the chip (×) and either re-pin the correct property or let Apply/Audition follow your selection instead.
AE's viewer briefly jumped to another comp. That's expected if your active tab is pinned into a comp other than the one you're looking at. AE can only evaluate an expression for the comp it's actually rendering, so eXLib briefly activates the pinned comp to sample it, then returns you to where you were.
Undo behaves unexpectedly
Apply created controls but something went wrong. Apply is atomic and undo-grouped: if any step fails, the controls it created are rolled back and your original expression is restored. If it succeeded, a single Cmd+Z in After Effects undoes the whole thing — controls and expression together.
⌃⌘Z undid my variable edit instead of my text. Authoring undo only fires when the Variables panel is open and focus is outside a real text field. Click into your text input first, and plain ⌘Z will run that field's own native undo instead.
Safety and recovery
I want a safety copy before reorganizing.
Every expression delete in the Library backs up automatically first. A pseudo-folder delete instead
relocates managed rigs to the parent and quarantines the leftover tree. See
Library Recovery before restoring either kind. On top of that, eXLib keeps a
launch autobackup of its own — the newest 30 date-stamped .exlib archives, kept
automatically — and you can take a manual snapshot any time from
Settings → Backup & restore. Restoring any of these runs through the same import
pipeline as opening any other archive; see
Autobackup & Restore for the full model.
Where does my library actually live?
~/Documents/eXLib Library by default — confirm the exact path in Settings → Library,
with a Copy button. You can edit it directly in Finder or VS Code and changes sync back
live. See The Library Is a Real Folder.
Reporting a bug traceably
Include the build stamp from Settings → About — version · short git SHA · build date — so whatever you're reporting maps to an exact commit. It's the same stamp logged
at boot, so any screenshot traces back cleanly.
If eXLib support asks for logs, see Sending Debug Logs for the exact steps — turn on Debug logging in Settings → Companion, reproduce the problem, then click Export debug bundle in the same place. It writes one file to your Desktop.