How to center align text vertically in Adobe After Effects

Center aligning text in Adobe After Effects is pretty simple IF you do it horizontally. I’m going to show you how you can center align your text horizontally and vertically, so that when you change the text, it’s still in the middle.

How to center align text automatically

The first thing you do is to create your text layer.
Right click in the timeline window, go to New and then Text.
Type your text and don’t click “Esc” when you are done.

Unlike Illustrator and Photoshop, clicking “Esc” after typing a text will actually undo your changes to the text, which can be a bit confusing. Instead, click somewhere in the timeline window if you want to deselect the text.

Now, select the text layer, go to the Paragraph window and click “Center text” to center align the text to the Anchor point. If you change the text now, it will still be center-aligned horizontally but if you add another row to your text, it will not be centered vertically.

The way to fix this is with 1 effect and 2 expressions.

First, go to the Effects window and search for “Separate XYZ Position”.
Drag and drop that effect onto your text layer.
Now, go to Transform and hold down the “Opt”-key while clicking the little stopwatch next to Position.
This will open up a text…