Feature Request: Native Lottie Animation Preview in GitHub

[hermet]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Product Feedback

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Other

Body

Overview

I'd like to propose native Lottie animation preview support in GitHub repositories.

Lottie is widely used for lightweight, scalable animations across web, mobile, and interactive applications. However, GitHub currently doesn't provide native playback support for Lottie animation files, requiring users to download them or rely on external preview tools.

Proposed Feature

• Preview Lottie animations (.lot / .json ) directly in GitHub's repository file viewer.
• Support inline Lottie animations in README files, similar to animated GIFs.

This would make it easier for developers and designers to browse, review, and collaborate on animation assets directly within GitHub.

Possible Implementation

I'm the founder and maintainer of ThorVG, an open-source vector graphics engine supporting SVG and Lottie animations.

ThorVG provides a lightweight, high-performance WebAssembly renderer that could potentially enable native Lottie previews with minimal runtime overhead.

Of course, the implementation doesn't necessarily have to use ThorVG. The primary goal is to bring native Lottie animation support to GitHub, regardless of the underlying rendering technology.

We'd be happy to provide technical assistance or a working prototype if GitHub is interested.

Benefits

• Significantly reduce file sizes compared to animated GIFs, improving loading times and reducing bandwidth usage.
• Deliver resolution-independent, high-quality animations without pixelation.
• Improve the developer experience for animation-focused repositories.
• Enable instant visualization of Lottie assets without external tools.
• Simplify animation review and collaboration.
• Expand GitHub's native support for modern graphics and animation formats.

I'd love to hear whether GitHub would consider supporting native Lottie animation previews.

Thanks for considering this proposal!

[github-actions[bot]]

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