What is a .lottie (dotLottie) file?
dotLottie (.lottie) is the Lottie ecosystem's packaging format: a ZIP container that holds one or more Lottie animations, their assets, and a manifest. It exists to fix the loose-JSON mess — and it's typically 30–50% smaller.
What's actually inside
Unzip a .lottie and you'll find a manifest.json describing the animations plus an animations/ folder of Lottie JSON files (and optionally images/themes). Players read the manifest and play the declared animation — one tidy file instead of scattered JSON and assets.
Why it's smaller
Lottie JSON is verbose and highly compressible; ZIP compression inside the container routinely cuts 30–50%, more if the JSON was never optimized. Combine optimization (precision reduction, metadata stripping) with dotLottie packaging for the smallest result.
Converting to and from it
Modern players (dotlottie-web and friends) take .lottie directly. For everything else, convert: this site reads .lottie files natively (no unzipping needed) and exports any format — GIF, MP4, WebM, APNG — or repackages plain JSON into a .lottie.
