I would very much like to disable the sliding animation that occurs when switching desktops via ctrl+→/← or ctrl+[number] in Lion. This was previously accomplished in previous versions with this command:
defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-swoosh-animation-off -bool YES && killall Dock
This new animation is even more slow than in Snow Leopard - nearly 1 second to switch - a real productivity killer.
Any help greatly appreciated!
50.7k54 gold badges203 silver badges275 bronze badges
asked Jul 21, 2011 at 2:26
14
I posted a bug on Radar#28495374 and here is the response from Apple:
Fixed in 10.12. Go to Accessibility and Turn on Reduce Motion…
Please let us know whether the issue is resolved for you by updating your bug report.
16
I dug deep into the app using GDB but the results were disappointing. I don't think there is a way to do this currently. Here's what I learned:
First you can change the speed of switching into Mission Control (still called Expose in the prefs). To do that just enter this command:
defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -int 0; killall Dock
And to go back to defaults run this command:
defaults delete com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration; killall Dock
Secondly there's a reference in the binary to fps-spaceswitch (frames per second spaceswitch). I messed with this for a while and also tried variations on this such as spaceswitch-animation-duration without luck.
Unfortunately (at least as of 10.7.1) there does not appear to be a way to change any settings related to this animation.
I filled a bug for this with Apple. The Radar number is 10073864. I would encourage you to also file the report at https://bugreport.apple.com/. Note in your description that it is a duplicate of the above bug report number to help the support staff categorize and prioritize this bug.
answered Sep 5, 2011 at 6:50
12
I've just noticed that doing ctrl+[number] is noticeably faster than ctrl+→/← .
It's still animated but it does complete the animation in about half the time. I'm not sure if that helps but I'll throw that out there.
7
TotalSpaces has an option to disable the animation for changing spaces:
TotalSpaces is still in beta and a bit glitchy though. There's a small delay before changing spaces, and the whole screen seems to move a few pixels horizontally during the transition. Edit: both of those have now been fixed.
15
I noticed that it is possible to control the speed of the space-change animation when you use the Swipe gesture in OS X Lion. You can make the spaces change as fast, if not faster, than they did in Snow Leopard by doing a quick three-finger or four-finger swipe to the left or the right. Of course, it's definitely something to get accostomed to if you've always used ⌘+→/←.
This did get me thinking. Since it seems that changing spaces via arrow keys, number keys, and gestures all perform the same type of animation, there is likely a single system command that all three of these actions map to. Additionally, since they all perform the animation at a different speed, there must be a parameter that controls the animation speed. I'm not an OS X developer, so hopefully someone else with a better knowledge of the underlying functionality of OS X would be able to determine what system commands are actually running when the user performs a certain action.
3
Rather than using Spaces, I have found that switching among non-fullscreen apps using the Alfred app is 'instant'. I create a key binding using shift+ctrl plus a letter for each app (e.g. e for Excel, w for Word, etc.). I have been doing this for years and the experience is truly instant.
If you put the apps in fullscreen mode, you still get the animation, so you still need to do Accessibility->Reduce Motion. In that case the app switching with Alfred is faster than using ctrl->arrow, but not as instant as it is if you avoid fullscreen.
answered Jul 12, 2022 at 15:50
You must log in to answer this question.
Explore related questions
See similar questions with these tags.