Friction 1.0 brings a matured open-source and cross-platform 2D animation suite to users

The open-source 2D animation application Friction has officially reached version 1.0, marking a major milestone that the developers describe as a heavy focus on refining the core architecture. The release arrives packed with workflow-oriented features designed to streamline everyday animation work: a command palette (Ctrl+Space) for quick access to nearly any action, including batched commands chained with &&; keyframe easing options directly in the timeline and graph; clip splitting with a single keystroke; timeline markers and frame in/out points; and a non-cached preview mode that plays the canvas view live, gizmos and selections included.

Precision and on-canvas manipulation take center stage in 1.0. New interactive Gizmos let animators move, rotate, scale, and shear objects directly with dedicated handles, while a new grid system and a full snapping suite, covering the canvas, boxes, nodes, and pivots, simplify alignment and layout. Step rotation is now available via keyboard modifiers, the align tool gained new options, and the color settings' widget was rebuilt around a new color wheel and map. Several time-saving touches round out the toolkit, from remembering last-used fills, strokes, and fonts to new expression presets, including scene-aware expressions ($scene.fps, $scene.width, $frame) with bindings, scripts, and external JavaScript support.

The 1.0 release also leans heavily into SVG interoperability, the foundation of Friction's vector workflow. Exports can now be optimized for the web, carry blend modes and masks, and even ship interactive transforms triggered by mouse events such as clicks, while imports saw refactored gradient and text handling, plus improved clipboard pasting that now works from Inkscape on macOS. On the output side, exported videos gain proper constant frame rate (CFR) support for better compatibility with video editors like Kdenlive, alongside a new WebM render preset, a dedicated image-sequence export dialog, and a custom SVG optimizer replacing the external SVGO tool.

First-time users are greeted by a new quick setup wizard that guides them through initial configuration, where they can also install the release's new presets, while the interface itself has undergone a substantial overhaul, consolidating toolbars into a unified toolbox and sporting a fresh logo. Friction 1.0 is available for Windows and Linux, with macOS builds (now supporting Apple Silicon) still labeled experimental; the developers also announced initial experimental support for OpenGL ES 3.0 as groundwork for future Flatpak AARCH64 and Android platforms, to be built from source for now.