The Manifest

Every .lottie package contains a manifest.json entry describing its contents — the list of animations, themes, and state machines, plus which one (if any) a player should load first.

Reading the manifest

dotlottie.getManifestJson(); // → string

Returns the full manifest as a JSON string. Parse it with JSON.parse() to inspect its fields directly, or use the more targeted methods below.

Setting the initial animation or state machine

dotlottie.setInitial("hero", null); // load "hero" first, no state machine
dotlottie.setInitial(null, "sm-button"); // load the "sm-button" state machine first
dotlottie.setInitial(null, null); // clear both

dotlottie.getInitialAnimationId(); // → string | null
dotlottie.getInitialAnimation(); // → string | null (the Lottie JSON itself)

v1 and v2 archive layouts

dotlottie-io reads both dotLottie archive layouts, but always writes v2:

Content	v2 path	Legacy v1 path
Animation	`a/{id}.json`	`animations/{id}.json`
Image	`i/{filename}`	`images/{filename}`
Audio	`u/{filename}`	`audio/{filename}`
Theme	`t/{id}.json`	— (v2 only)
State machine	`s/{id}.json`	— (v2 only)

Themes and state machines don't exist in the v1 layout — they're a v2-only addition. When you load a v1 file with DotLottie.fromFile/fromBytes, its manifest is normalized to version: "2" on read, and any .lottie you write back out (via toBytes) is always in the v2 layout, regardless of what you loaded.

Next up: Migrating from dotlottie-js