Stop At Next Marker — User Documentation 

Overview

Stop At Next Marker is a lightweight Blender add-on that automatically pauses timeline playback when the playhead reaches the next marker. No changes to your workflow — just press Space as you normally would.

Common use cases:

• Reviewing an animation shot by shot, stopping at each cut point
• Checking a pose or keyframe at a specific moment without manually scrubbing
• Presenting work-in-progress, pausing at each scene boundary
• especially useful for simulations (like in geometry nodes) where you cannot jump to markers, because the simulation has to be played from the beginning to get correct results

Requirements

• Blender 2.8 or newer
• No external dependencies 

Usage

Place one or more markers on the timeline (press M with the cursor over the Timeline editor). Set the playhead to any frame before the first marker you want to stop at, then press Space. Playback stops automatically at the next marker ahead of the playhead.

Pressing Space again resumes playback and stops at the following marker. This chains across as many markers as you have in the scene.

Toggling On and Off

With the cursor inside the Timeline, Dopesheet, or Graph Editor, press Shift+M to toggle the behaviour on or off. A status message appears in the info bar at the top of the screen:

• Stop at marker enabled
• Stop at marker disabled

When disabled, playback behaves exactly as standard Blender.

Keyboard Shortcuts

To rebind: Edit → Preferences → Keymap, search for "Toggle Stop At Next Marker", click the binding to change it.

Troubleshooting

Playback does not stop at a marker Check that the add-on is enabled in Preferences. Press Shift+M in one of the animation editors to confirm the feature is toggled on.

Playback stops one frame too early or too late In the Timeline header, set Playback to Frame Dropping so frame numbers are accurately reported.

Shift+M conflicts with another add-on Rebind the shortcut in Edit → Preferences → Keymap as described above.

The add-on stops working after loading a new file The handler is persistent and should survive file loads. If it stops, disable and re-enable the add-on in Preferences to re-register it.

Uninstalling

Go to Edit → Preferences → Add-ons, find Animation: Stop At Next Marker, untick the checkbox, then click Remove.