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Is there any way to speed up the animation when you switch from one space to another on Mac OS X?

I'd like to make the space-transition quicker, or even instantaneous.

Does anybody know of any way to do this, or any software to do so?

Evan Carroll
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    +1 Good question (although I don't feel Spaces animation is too slow for me). My research so far indicates that there are no options to speed up/turning off Spaces animation. – hanleyp Sep 06 '09 at 01:09
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    I hate it when they make you wait for animations. This is bad UX. Animations should make the experience more pleasant instead of irritating users by making them wait. – astroboy Jul 10 '23 at 17:51

9 Answers9

11

On my M1 Macbook Pro running Monterey, 12.3.1 (and continued working on Ventura1), this solution worked for me where others did not:

  1. Open Displays options in System Preferences
  2. Change Refresh Rate from ProMotion to 60Hz.

It makes the animation speed the same as it is on Big Sur, on my Intel Macbook Pro. That is to say, it makes it significantly faster.

I believe that the chipset is not the difference, but rather, the OS version or the display type (because my machine running Big Sur does not have a Refresh Rate option for its display.)

On both OS versions, there is also a variant of the touch gesture for swapping spaces that makes the switch almost instant. However, it requires you to make a wider range of motion very quickly, and it is much more difficult to perform on my M1 machine than my Intel one. (Again, I believe the chipset is not the difference, but rather, the OS version or perhaps the trackpad itself.) If changing the refresh rate is not good enough for you, then this gesture is your only recourse.

Footnotes:

  1. As of November 2023, a bug in macOS 13.6+ and 14.0+ has been found that, for Apple Silicon, if you update the OS while Refresh Rate is not set to ProMotion, you will brick your Macbook and have to do a Device Firmware Update recovery using another Mac. I suggest that until this bug is solved, you either take extreme care not to update your OS without first setting your Refresh Rate back to Pro Motion, or you do not use this solution at all.
2rs2ts
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    It does help a bit but also makes the transition and general movement look much more jittery. – Daniel Porteous May 16 '22 at 14:31
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    Wow! This Refresh Rate really helped me! It's not how much faster this transition is, but it is really faster to get the focus on the switched desktop! Thanks! – leo begher Jun 03 '22 at 08:12
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    Wow, this is the winner! The animated transitions between screens take about half the time now. I have no idea why lowering the refresh rate makes the speed of animations different, but there you have it! – sstur Jul 14 '22 at 14:50
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    Wonderful, it works on my Macbook Pro M1Max with a Extend Display. – John Xiao Dec 15 '22 at 07:30
  • @DanielPorteous I did not find that to be true at first, but over time, I would occasionally notice that my mouse cursor had very noticeable "afterimages" that I guess is probably what you refer to as the "general movement" looking "jittery." Fortunately, the workaround was to set my Refresh Rate to ProMotion and then back to 60Hz again. Unfortunately, it's a manual workaround–maybe one could use some AppleScript and Automator to automate it, but you'd still have to pause what you're doing to manually invoke the workaround. Apple needs to get their act together, tbh. – 2rs2ts Dec 20 '22 at 01:08
  • Does not work on Sonoma, and besides, sacrificing ProMotion is not worth it in my opinion – Adam Lindberg Oct 12 '23 at 09:27
  • @AdamLindberg I don't have a machine that is both on Apple Silicon and on Sonoma. (Intel machine is, but it doesn't have a ProMotion display. The option to change refresh rates still exists, but it never had ProMotion as an option to start with. I can't upgrade my M1 machine, since it's company-controlled and they're not letting us upgrade to Sonoma yet.) Can you elaborate on what about it doesn't work? Does setting it to 60Hz not change the animation speed or mouse focus speed anymore? Or is the option to change it simply gone? More details would be useful, so I can edit it into my answer. – 2rs2ts Nov 08 '23 at 17:08
  • @2rs2ts Just tested it again because to me, the speed felt visible the same. But it turns out the input is still allowed somewhat earlier (in ~50% of the switch time, compared to ProMotion). Not that I will switch of ProMotion just because of this, but for someone who doesn't care about it it might be worthwhile :-) – Adam Lindberg Nov 20 '23 at 14:31
10

This works on 10.7 (Mountain Lion) and below.

  1. Open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app

  2. Copy and paste the following into the terminal window and then press enter:

    defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-swoosh-animation-off -bool YES && killall Dock

from hyperspace blog

Evan Carroll
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John
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7

There is an option in MacOS that speeds up the animation somewhat although still not instant: On your Mac, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Accessibility, then click Display > check "Reduce Motion".

enter image description here

Chris Smith
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    Browsers can tap into this setting now and developers might disable animations on websites with this enabled, I wouldn't advise using it anymore if you just want faster spaces transitions – David Fregoli Dec 09 '21 at 10:01
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    Unfortunately, it does not speed up the transition — it just changes it opacity fade instead of slide. You can't interact with a new Space while animation is in progress :( – Pavel Alexeev Dec 16 '21 at 13:20
  • This is so cool, fade is SO much better for me! – lzap Oct 27 '22 at 09:48
  • Just tried this again in Sonoma, and the fade is faster but as far as I can tell it feels like the input delay is as long as with the animated switch. If I start pressing keys immediately after the switch, they don't register until ~0.5-1.0 second after the fade – Adam Lindberg Nov 20 '23 at 14:24
  • I've since stopped using this setting also and just dealt with the delay. The animation is inconvenient and annoying but until Apple provides something in a MacOS update I think we are stuck. – Chris Smith Nov 26 '23 at 21:40
4

Yabai

If you can disable SIP, and you're using a modern version of OSX then you can accomplish this with the Yabai scripting addition.

It does this natively,

ability to switch active desktop instantly, bypassing the animation (High Sierra and Mojave)

As a side note, Yabai is open source. You can find the function responsible for the animation-less transitions here

Why does SIP need to be disabled? You can read about that here: https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai/issues/798#issuecomment-767084471

Evan Carroll
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    It looks like chunkwm has been deprecated and replaced by yabai. – Taylor D. Edmiston Jul 09 '19 at 18:02
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    Disabling SIP has some security implications. Be sure you know what you're doing before disabling SIP – ovidb Apr 11 '23 at 14:22
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    @ovidb yea, pretty pathetic someone designed an operating system so closed that the only way to accomplish a cosmetic/UI fix is to hack Dock.app? Every other system implements transitions with hooks. But whatever, if you want this with OSX it's the only way. – Evan Carroll Apr 11 '23 at 17:17
4

Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts, then click "Mission Control" in the sidebar. Scroll to the bottom of the list, and expand that "Mission Control" section. Now enable the keyboard shortcuts for all the desktops.

You can now switch to space 1, by pressing ctrl-1, space 2 by pressing ctrl-2, etc. Not only does this enable you to get to a space instantly without navigating past all the other spaces, the animation for this switch is significantly faster than the default space switching animation.

daviewales
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    ctrl-1/ctrl-2 approach appears to be same speed for me (on macOS Mojave). But if I switch ten times in a row, 11th appears slightly faster. – HeyWatchThis May 13 '19 at 15:55
  • For me only the checkboxes for desktop 1 and desktop 2 were showing up. I had to create extra desktops, then restart system settings in order for the other checkboxes to appear. – Jespertheend Jul 05 '23 at 18:57
2

Using yabai you can achieve an instant switch between spaces. Setup yabai as described in the docs. Than install skhd and bind yabai -m space --focus next to for example crtl right like so:

ctrl - right : yabai -m space --focus next
ctrl - left : yabai -m space --focus prev
Peregrino69
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supermar10
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    This will only work if SIP is disabled, however, disabling SIP has some security implications – ovidb Apr 11 '23 at 14:23
1

This solution works in spite of being 10+ years old (just did it in Monterey on M1 chip). Don't forget to log out and back in.

James
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    Welcome to SuperUser! Please do not post link only answers as the linked site could be changed or deleted altogether, rendering your answer useless. Instead please quote the most important parts from the linked site and provide the source for reference only. – DarkDiamond Feb 02 '22 at 21:50
  • It also makes judging the quality of your answer difficult. Opening a site takes time. – HappyFace Feb 03 '22 at 09:43
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    Applied it, logged in and out, didn't do anything for me. – Marko Topolnik Feb 10 '22 at 10:24
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    This decidedly does not work on Monterey, version 12.3.1, on my M1 chip. – 2rs2ts May 10 '22 at 21:19
  • Worked for me on M2 15 inch air. Had to kill the dock defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-edge-delay -float 0.1 && killall Dock – Daniel Sep 04 '23 at 09:47
  • did nothing for me on M2 15" Pro, verified I wrote the correct value with defaults read, and I tried "killall Dock" and logging out and back in as well. – jrz Sep 29 '23 at 17:59
0

BetterMouse

With BetterMouse (an alternative to something like Logi Options+, or Mos) you can map Ctrl + right-arrow-key to be a 3 finger swipe to the left (likewise for the other direction). This way, the transition is faster than the regular shortcut.

screenshot of settings

Additionally enabling "reduced motion" in macOS settings makes the transition feel near instant.

Downside: the app is paid, and will also affect your mouse behavior.

NeccesaryCookiesOnly
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-1

There is a utility app you can installed called Hyperspaces that adds features to Spaces. 6 days ago, there was an preview build from the developer which added an option to turn off Core Animation.

hanleyp
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