What is LottieFiles and How to Use It – A Complete Guide

Hii Coders! Welcome To Our Codewithrandom blog, Ever noticed those smooth, clean animations in modern apps and websites? The ones that load fast, look sharp, and just feel right?
Chances are, they’re made with something called Lottie – and that’s where LottieFiles comes into play. You can use Lottie by embedding the code snippet or with an NPM package to render the file. This guide will show you both methods. and all browsers that support contemporary JavaScript will render Lottie animations.

So, what exactly is LottieFiles?

Lottie files are small animation files that use JSON data to describe vector graphics. This makes them incredibly efficient and scalable, unlike traditional formats like GIFs. They load quickly, look great on any screen size, and work across different platforms (web, iOS, Android)How are these animations created?

Most Lottie animations are made in Adobe After Effects, and then exported using a plugin called Bodymovin. This plugin turns your animation into a .json file — that’s the magic behind Lottie.

Once exported, you can upload it to LottieFiles.com and:

• Preview how it looks

• Edit or customize it

• Download or embed it

• Even optimize it for performance

Animation File Size

The size of a Lottie is always super small. To understand just how small, imagine that a PNG image is a heavy bison on your homepage.

What’s the history of the Lottie format?

Lottie’s history dates back to 2015 when Hernan Torrisi released a plugin named Bodymovin. This plugin exported animations made in Adobe After Effects as JSON files, rendering them at runtime. Before this invention, there were limited options for implementation, and the whole integration process was poor.

Motion designers passed their animations to the developers who had two options:

1. They could either export low-quality animations.
2. Try to reproduce them from scratch, using their coding skills.

Why do developers & designers love it?

• Lightweight – Reduces app or site loading time

• Sharp quality – Looks great on all screen sizes

• Interactive – You can control playback with code

• Cross-platform – Works on Web, Android, iOS, Flutter, React, Unity, etc.

What is this new .lottie format?

You might also come across .lottie files — these are like advanced versions of Lottie animations. Think of them as zip files:

• Smaller in size

• Can hold multiple animations

• Support themes and interactivity

• Load even faster

What are the main benefits of Lottie?

The main benefits of Lottie as a file format are the following:

• Compact file size
• Infinite scalability
• Multi-platform compatibility
• Flexibility
• Collaborative potential

Always High Quality

You can zoom in and the quality will still be high and never pixilate. You can even do that when it plays (in real time) on all device. I want to keep this explanation as simple as possible, but if you’re curious to learn more, you can look up how vector images works.

How to use Lottie in your projects

Here’s how simple it is:

1. Find or upload an animation on LottieFiles

2. Copy the code (HTML, React, Flutter – whatever you use)

3. Paste it into your project

4. That’s it – animation live on screen! 

If you are using React:

import Lottie from 'lottie-react'; import animationData from './yourAnimation.json'; <Lottie animationData={animationData} loop={true} /> 

Or on a website using the Lottie web player:

<script src="https://unpkg.com/@lottiefiles/lottie-player@latest/dist/lottie-player.js"></script> <lottie-player src="https://assets10.lottiefiles.com/packages/lf20_abc123.json" background="transparent" speed="1" loop autoplay></lottie-player> 

Where is it actually used?

• App onboarding screens

• Success/error checkmarks

• Fancy loading spinners

• Product pages

• Presentations (even Pitch.com uses it!)

• Personal portfolios and landing pages

Where to Find Lottie Animations?

Here are a few great places:

• LottieFiles – The go-to platform

• Creattie – Premium animation packs

• SVGator Blog – In-depth format guide

Is Lottie open-source?

Yes, Lottie is open source; you can view the documentation here and the source code on GitHub.

Why has Lottie become popular?

Not that long ago, developers used to struggle for every kilobyte of website and application files because slow loading times get users pretty upset.

So what developers did back then was either decrease image quality for a faster load time, or use bigger files and create a longer load time. In both scenarios, user experience suffered, Load times can make the difference between whether a user stays – or leaves your site. Even Google downgrades SEO rankings if a website is slow because bad experience is considered a key indicator of a bad website.

Plays Everywhere

Lottie is multi-platform and plays everywhere: web, IOS, Android, React Native, you name it. Also, you don’t need any modifications for different platforms or screen sizes. You just create one file, and it’ll play on every platform, saving tons of time for designers and accelerating the process.

Check out this tutorial if you want to use Lottie animations with React.

Sample App

If you want to add that extra “wow factor” to your project without slowing things down, LottieFiles is a must-use tool. No more bulky GIFs or choppy animations. Just clean, fast, and professional-looking visuals.

It’s beginner-friendly, developer-ready, and totally free.
Try it once, and you’ll wonder how you ever made UI without it

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Article Author :- Ashutosh Mishra

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