Text on a path

It never stops following

Some tools copy a path into the text the moment you place it — reshape the original afterward and the text stays exactly where it was, reading a snapshot nobody remembers taking. A text on a path here points at the host shape itself, not a copy of its geometry, so a morph, a resize or a keyframed corner radius re-lays the words on the same frame automatically. There is no stale copy anywhere to go out of sync.

Sliding along the curve

Grab the text, or its grip, and drag to slide it along the outline. Distance is measured in lapsrather than clamped to the path’s length — travel past the end of an open path or spin repeatedly around a closed one, and the count keeps going instead of stopping dead. The offset keyframes like any other property, through the same keyframe engine every field uses.

The inspector’s On path section

A driven number you could still type into would be worse than no field at all, so a bound text swaps its Transform section for On path: offset in laps, rise (how far the text sits off the curve, perpendicular to it), turn, flip, wrap, which contour to ride on a compound shape, and Detach to cut the bind and leave a normal, freely-positioned text behind.

Exports as a real curve

Exportingto SVG renders the resolved instant, so the glyph outlines land in the file already placed on the curve — a text on a path becomes a real outline on a real curve, not a bounding-box approximation. Lottie can’t read a live binding, so it bakes the slide into ordinary per-frame keys before translating, and reports anything it genuinely couldn’t carry alongside the rest of its fidelity report.

Riding a path is a placement rule, distinct from motion paths & curves, which keyframe where a layer travels over time. A related idea lives on the canvas side too — see Auto layout, which places a group’s members the same live way this places glyphs on a curve.