Framer Motion is now independent, introducing Motion

First, some personal news: Next week will be my last at Framer.

Writing that feels pretty wild. Making Framer Motion has been the best job of my life. To do so for six years within the best product team in the world, both a massive learning experience and a privilege.

However, that leads to some news that I'm incredibly excited to share.

With Framer's blessing and support, Framer Motion is now completely independent. I'm spinning it off into its own project, to better serve the whole community.

Introducing Motion.

What's changing?

There are two big changes to highlight. The first is Motion's brand new home, here at motion.dev. Besides a fresh new design, it finally has a much-requested search!

The second change is also a big request from the community. For a long time, users have asked to use Framer Motion outside of React. Either with vanilla JS, or other frameworks like Vue.

Today, Motion becomes more than a React library, with an amazing set of vanilla APIs that bring Motion's hybrid engine and extensive feature set to everyone.

In the coming weeks and months, more features from Framer Motion will make their way to this new vanilla API, and I'll be writing new integration guides that will help you use them everywhere.

Beyond that, expect improved support and documentation, a stronger community, and a renewed focus on developer-facing features.

Why's this happening?

This news might be surprising to many, but I think in context it's the natural and obvious next step for Motion.

Six years ago, Framer bought my project Popmotion because they wanted a simple React API, unlimited flexibility, and smooth animations across all devices.

As Framer moved from prototyping into sites, these animations only became more important because now they're being shared with millions of monthly visitors.

But Motion also became wildly successful in its own right, becoming the go-to React animation solution with over 4.5 million weekly downloads on npm.

It's a part of Framer, but it's also apart from Framer, serving a much wider set of users.

We feel like the best way to ensure Motion's future as a core driver of animations on not just Framer sites, or just React sites, but all sites, is to spin it out as an independent open source project for the community.

For Motion, the high demands of Framer (in terms of capability and performance) have made Motion the product that it is today. So Framer users can rest assured that their animations will continue to be powered by Motion in the future.

Spinning out Motion is a bold move by Framer, and I'm super delighted that they're on board as Motion's first sponsor!

So, what's next?

Honestly, I have a long list of things I want to do next. The hard part will be picking what's first.

New APIs built on emerging browser features like View Transitions. Bringing the power of Motion's industry-leading layout animations to the new vanilla API. High-level components that are both beautiful and accessible. Better dev tools. Plugins for popular design tools.

Realistically, for Motion to thrive, I first need to make it sustainable. If you or your company already finds value from it, consider a sponsorship. All sponsors receive access to our private Motion Discord and an exclusive wallpaper pack, and higher tiers can get their logo and link on the homepage (110k+ monthly visitors).

In fact, I can already thank Tailwind for becoming Motion's second sponsor. These sponsorships will allow me to spend more time on the core library, and less on finding other avenues of monetisation.

That said, I already have ideas there too, a mix of fun and useful.

But whatever's next, I'm beyond excited for this next chapter, and if you're an existing Motion One or Framer Motion user, I hope you are too!

Here's to the next six years.