DocsSound, sensors and files

.motion files

A .motion file is a whole scene in one file: its layers and settings, and every picture, video and model it uses. It's how you move a scene to another computer, send it to a friend, or keep a copy. The same file plays on Linux, Windows and Android.

What's inside

• The scene itself: its layers, the look, the settings it offers, its materials, scripts and visual scripts, particle systems and timeline.
• Every file the scene uses: pictures, videos, 3D models, fonts, web pages, lookup tables. Only the files the scene really uses go in, and a file used twice is kept once.
• Its shaders, already built, so it opens quickly.
• A thumbnail, so Motion can show it before opening it (when the preview is under 1 MB).

Pictures and videos are stored as they are, since they're compressed already; everything else is squeezed. So a .motion file is about the size of its media plus a little.

What's never inside: the tokens that feed a scene's sensors stay on your computer: the file only says which sensors it reads (see Sensors and the watch).

Exporting one

In Studio, pick File › Export › Motion file (.motion)… (in a narrow window, Export a Motion file (.motion)… in the ⋯ menu), or press Ctrl+K and type "export". Choose where it goes. Studio saves the scene first, then packs it, and tells you how big the file came out and which files take the most room:

Exported Night Garden.motion, 14.2 MB (rain.mp4 9.8 MB, moss.jpg 2.1 MB, …)

If one file makes it much bigger than you'd like, that's where to look: a shorter loop, a smaller picture.

File › Export › Folder as a .zip… is the other choice. It packs the scene's folder as it is, for when you want to look at the files or keep working on them elsewhere. For sharing a scene, .motion is the better one.

To put a scene on Motion Hub, you don't need to export anything: publishing packs it for you (see Sharing).

Opening one

• In Motion Player (Linux and Windows), drag the file onto the window, or click Add, A video, picture or scene file…. It's checked, unpacked into your own scenes, and opens on its page, ready to put on a screen.
• In Motion Studio, click Open a file… on the start screen, or pick File › Open… (Ctrl+O) and then From a file. The scene opens as it is; when you save it, it becomes one of your own.
• On Android, tap Add a scene in the app, or open the file from your Files app or share it to Motion.
• From a terminal: motion-cli import Night\ Garden.motion.

A file from a newer Motion than yours says so, and asks you to update. A damaged file says what's wrong with it and doesn't open.

Sizes and limits

• A .motion file can be up to 4 GB.
• The files inside can come to 2 GB once unpacked, and no one of them can be over 512 MB.
• It can hold up to 2,000 files.
• The scene's own data, everything but its media, can be up to 64 MB once unpacked. A scene made in Studio is nowhere near this.
• The thumbnail is left out if it's over 1 MB; the file then has none.
• Motion Hub takes scenes up to 100 MB.

Opening one from someone else

A .motion file is meant to be safe to open whoever sent it. It holds data, and Motion checks it before it uses any of it:

• It's checked from end to end first. Every part carries a fingerprint, and Motion checks them all, along with the file's size and layout, before it unpacks a byte. A file that's damaged, cut short or tampered with is refused, with the reason.
• It can't ask for too much. Every size is checked against the limits above while it's read, so a file can't swell into something huge once unpacked.
• It can't write outside its own folder. The names of the files inside are names, never paths, and Motion refuses any that would land elsewhere.
• It carries no programs. Only scenes made from layers come in. Older hand-written scenes, which were code, aren't opened.
• Its scripts are kept in. A scene's scripts run inside Motion, not as programs on your computer. They can't read your files, and they reach only the websites the scene names.
• You decide which websites it reaches. The first time a scene wants a website, Motion asks before it shows the scene: allow it, refuse it or leave it to ask later. You can change your answers any time in Settings, Websites scenes reach.
• Web pages stay offline unless the scene's web layer has its Network on, and even then they keep to themselves: no downloads, no files, no windows of their own, no sign-ins of yours.

So the worst a stranger's scene can do is look bad.

Signed files

A .motion file can be signed by whoever made it, so you can tell it's theirs and unchanged since. Signing is done from a terminal: motion-cli keygen my-key.pem makes a key (keep it to yourself), and motion-cli pack my-scene --sign my-key.pem signs the file as it packs it. motion-cli inspect file.motion says who signed a file, by their key's id, and whether the signature is good, along with everything else the file holds.

In a terminal

The motion-cli command does all of this without a window (on Windows it's motion.exe, in the host folder where Motion is installed):

Your own scenes live in %LOCALAPPDATA%\motion\scenes on Windows and ~/.local/share/motion/scenes on Linux.

Last changed 2 November 2026. Something wrong here? Tell us.