How to open .LOTTIE files (Lottie animations) on Android, Windows and Linux

A designer hands over loading-spinner.lottie or like-button.riv for an app or a website. You’d like to see it move before anyone builds it in, but tapping the file on your phone does nothing.

Folders plays both kinds. It opens Lottie (.lottie) and Rive (.riv) animations in its own viewer on Android, Windows and Linux, with no After Effects, Rive account or developer tools needed.

What is a .lottie file?

Lottie is a format for small vector animations, first released as open source by Airbnb. Designers make the animation in Adobe After Effects and export it with the Bodymovin plug-in as JSON: shapes, colours, layers and keyframes described in text. Lottie players in apps and web pages draw it live, so it stays sharp at any size and is often only a few kilobytes. You meet them as loading spinners, success ticks and animated icons.

A .lottie file, also called dotLottie, is a newer packaging from LottieFiles: a ZIP archive holding one or more Lottie animations, the images they use and a small manifest. Plenty of Lottie animations are still handed around as plain .json.

Rive is a different tool with the same goal. Its .riv file is a compact binary that the Rive runtime plays, and besides timeline animations it can contain state machines that react to taps, hovers or values from the app. The editable project lives in the Rive editor, not in the .riv.

Extension	What it is	Where you meet it
.lottie	dotLottie: a ZIP with one or more Lottie animations	LottieFiles downloads, app and web projects
.riv	A Rive runtime file, possibly interactive	Apps, websites and game menus built with Rive

How to open a .lottie file with Folders

On Android:

1. Install Folders from the download page and allow access to your files.
2. Find the animation, or type its name into search.
3. Tap it. The animation starts playing.
4. If it came through email or a chat app, tap it there and choose Open with → Folders.

On Windows and Linux:

1. Browse to the file in Folders and double-click it.
2. On Windows, the installer also adds Folders to File Explorer’s Open with menu for .lottie and .riv files: right-click → Open with → Folders.

Lottie animations saved as .json play too: Folders checks whether a .json file is a Lottie animation and, if so, opens the player instead of the text editor.

What you can do with it in Folders

• Watch it loop. The animation plays at once and repeats, scaled to fit the screen.
• Pause and scrub a Lottie animation. The bar under it has Play/Pause, a slider to move to any moment, and the time in seconds.
• Change the background. The Background button switches between a transparency grid, light and dark, so you can see how the animation sits on a light or dark screen and where it’s transparent.
• Swipe through a folder. In a folder of .riv files, or of Lottie animations saved as .json, swipe sideways to go to the next one; a counter shows where you are.
• See the code of a Lottie .json: right-click the file on a computer, or long-press it on a phone and choose All actions…, then Open with… → Text editor, and Format JSON to make it readable.

Folders is a viewer. It doesn’t edit animations, change their colours, or export them as GIF or video.

Other ways to open .lottie files

• LottieFiles (website and apps) previews Lottie animations, edits colours and converts them to GIF or MP4.
• After Effects with the Bodymovin plug-in, if you have the original project.
• The Rive editor for the project behind a .riv, and Rive’s runtimes for building it into an app or a web page.

Problems opening a .lottie file?

• “Couldn’t play this animation. It isn’t a valid Lottie file.” The file may be damaged, or not a Lottie animation at all. As a .lottie file is a ZIP, you can also look inside: right-click it (or long-press it and choose All actions…), pick Open with… → Archive viewer, open the animations folder and tap the .json there, which Folders plays as a Lottie animation.
• A Rive file says it “isn’t a valid Rive file, or it needs a newer player”. It may have been exported from a newer version of the Rive editor than the player in Folders understands, or it’s a different file renamed to .riv. Ask for a fresh export.
• It moves, but differently from After Effects. Lottie supports a subset of After Effects: some effects, expressions and layer styles don’t carry over. That’s a limit of the format, so the fix is in the original project.
• Pictures are missing from a Lottie animation. A plain .json animation can refer to images kept as separate files, which get lost when the .json travels alone. Ask for a version with the images embedded, or a .lottie, which bundles them.

Questions people ask

Can I open a .lottie file on Android? Yes. Install Folders and tap the file. It plays straight away.

How do I convert a Lottie animation to GIF or MP4? Use LottieFiles’ converters, or export from After Effects. Folders plays Lottie animations but doesn’t convert them.

Lottie vs Rive: what’s the difference? Lottie comes from After Effects and plays a timeline. Rive is its own design tool and can add interactive states. Both are vector formats made for apps and websites.

Is a .lottie the same as a .json? Not quite. A Lottie .json is one animation in text. A .lottie is a ZIP that can hold several animations and their images in one smaller file.

Related guides: how to open JSON files, how to open SVG files, or the full list of all 382 file types Folders opens.