Comment by WhyNotHugo
7 days ago
You can also disable animations on iOS.
When switching between screens, there’s just a long pause instead of the animation. These pauses drive me crazy, it’s simply not possible to configure the device to be responsive.
> You can also disable animations on iOS.
No, you can not. You can reduce _some_ animations, but most of them actually remain. Including the most annoying ones like the slowwwww screen switching, or the bottom sheet animation.
An amusing anecdote: I have animation turned off entirely on my Android phone, and I was demoing an app on it. People commented how amazingly fast it felt compared to iOS, simply because there were no animations.
I'm just as annoyed by this, but from what I understand, the animations are used to hide loading times, so the delay is not optional.
That explanation makes no sense in this case. The workspace transition animation takes a full second, on extremely performant devices that can keep up their pace up until the OS swaps around 15GB, at which point animations start lagging so they actually make it even worse. Meanwhile a Linux setup will switch workspaces instantly. Same for Windows 11 if you turn off animations, by the way.
This animation slows every transition by one second including entering and leaving fullscreen mode, because on Mac OS fullscreen works by moving the window to a new workspace. There is no justification for this.
They're not [always] about hiding loading times. Even switching from an app to the desktop screen has a slow animation, or switching back and forth between two running apps.
macOS is awful in so many places. I would prefer if they had an option to disable only some of the animations. "Show Desktop" is so sudden and zoomy I almost get motion sickness, but Mission Control is more subtle and really helps me figure out which window is which.
My strategy for multiple desktops is to not use them at all. But I'm enjoying the comfort of a 43" screen, so all the windows I need just fit.
IMHO iOS strikes an almost perfect balance. It animates things in response to continuous drag gestures (notification centre, app switching), but almost nothing else. Maybe macOS could take a page from that book? E.g. dragging the menu bar; the animation plays out in direct response to user action.