Clutter is a library for doing animations and using a 2.5-D canvas. You create graphical objects out of images, and you can manipulate them later to move them, rotate them, or give them quasi-3D effects.

Clutter использует промышленные стандартные программные интерфейсы OpenGL и OpenGL|ES для доступа к ускоряющим аппаратным средствам рабочих станций и мобильных сред не внося при этом сложности в конвейерное программирование GPU.

Clutter does not specify any visual style, and does not provide any pre-defined complex user interface control; it lets the developer define what is needed, using a flexible scene graph API, with free-form placement of the scene elements (or actors) on the main viewport (or stage).

Clutter comes with pre-defined actors for displaying solid colors, image data, text and custom high-precision 2D drawing using the Cairo API. Clutter also provides generic classes for structuring a user interface using both a box-packing model like GTK+, and a series of free-form constraints.

Clutter provides an extensible animation framework and graphical effects. An animation is associated with a timeline and changes one or more properties of one or more actors over time, for example their rotation in a particular dimension, scale, size, opacity, etc.

Существует несколько сторонних библиотек для стыковки с другими технологиями: Clutter-GTK, для встраивания сцены Clutter внутрь приложения GTK+; Clutter-GStreamer, для встраивания видео и аудио конвейеров GStreamer; Clutter-Box2D и Clutter-Bullet, для добавление физического взаимодействия в 2D и 3D окружения.