No matter how fast your machine is, when you get the entire look of your project dialed-in, it's probably going to take a while to preview. Traditional workarounds—soloing, proxies, pre-rendering, skipping frames, lowering the preview resolution, or manually toggling effects on/off can be cumbersome.
Instead, Lightswitch let's you designate what layers and effects are important to see, significantly speeding up the preview process. This is particularly beneficial for resource heavy effects like blurs and glows, that are important for the look of your work, but aren't necessary to see 90% of the time while you're animating.
Lightswitch gives you the freedom to focus on the timing and fluidity of your animations, assessing the critical movements without the drag of full renders. When you need to see everything again, simply toggle Lightswitch to reactivate hidden elements almost instantly across your entire project. The only delay you'll encounter is the time needed for After Effects to refresh its cache after significant changes.
With Lightswitch you'll spend less time waiting, and more time creating—your animations are just a switch away from near real-time performance.
This download comes with the script. The manual is online and can be found in the sidebar on the right.