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Get your layers
back out.

Decompose lifts the contents of a precomp up into the parent comp. If the precomp itself was animated, it stays behind as an empty driver — so the motion you built on it survives the move.

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Free, forever. The account just gives you somewhere to download it from.

Two-minute install.

Option A — as a dockable panel (recommended)

Download the .jsx file.

Quit After Effects.

Drop the file into the ScriptUI Panels folder:

macOS/Applications/Adobe After Effects <version>/Scripts/ScriptUI Panels

WindowsC:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects <version>\Support Files\Scripts\ScriptUI Panels

Start After Effects and open the panel from the Window menu, at the bottom of the list.

Dock it anywhere you like — it stays there between sessions.

In a hurry? File → Scripts → Run Script File… and pick the .jsx. Runs once, installs nothing.

Precomping is easy.
Un-precomping isn't.

You precomped three layers to keep the timeline tidy. Two hours later you need them back out — a mask has to sit above one of them, or the client wants the middle element gone entirely.

After Effects has no button for that. So you copy the layers up, discover the precomp had its own position and scale animation, and now everything sits in the wrong place moving the wrong way. The tidying up costs more than the tidying did.

Out of the box,
without losing the motion.

Layers Lifted Out: The contents of the precomp move up into the parent comp, where you can mask them, reorder them, or delete the one that has to go.
Animation Survives: If the precomp layer carried its own animation, it stays behind as an empty driver so that motion keeps applying to what came out of it.
No Manual Rebuild: No copying layers up, no re-deriving transforms by hand, no discovering the discrepancy three frames into playback.
The Undo Of Precompose: The operation After Effects has always been missing, sitting next to the one it does have.

For the moment you realise
it shouldn't have been a precomp.

Late Revisions

One element inside the precomp has to change or disappear. Get the layers out, make the change, keep the timing you already approved.

Masks And Mattes

A matte needs to sit between two layers that are currently trapped in the same precomp. Now they're siblings again.

Inherited Projects

Someone else's precomps, nested for reasons nobody remembers. Open them up and see what you're actually working with.

Precompose has an undo now.

Decompose is free. Create a MotionPotion account and it's yours, along with the other four free scripts — and everything in Wizard when you're ready for it.