Animations are indeed great for that but that's not a progress indicator. Those are two distinct things. The one is just to distract the user for some time. Th

Animations are indeed great for that but that's not a progress indicator. Those are two distinct things. The one is just to distract the user for some time. The other is to signal that something's going on, and indicate the progress of that (background) task. A distracting animation is only good to hide some latency. In cases where progress will be made eventually for sure and in a predicable amount of time. If there is a task you can't be sure about when or even if it completes an animation is not the right tool. There you need a proper progress indicator.