Disabling system animations

I want to add my vote to this list. Either allow me to turn off animation or at least change the animation and it's duration. A quick fade would be much easier on my eyes and less vertigo inducing. When i do presentations on my computer the spaces transition literally irritates the audience...

Let Apple know if you feel the same...
http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

You can make your suggestions to Apple here:
https://bugreport.apple.com
Yes, it's for more than just bug reports.
When you buy an OS, you get what it supplies. It's like buying anything else. Some parts are customizable, some are not.
If you use X11 instead of the desktop GUI you might feel more at home. You might even be able to install one of the Linux desktops via X11.
The reason there are many OSs is that different people like different things. Many Leopard users enjoy the animations. Until you mentioned them, I was not even aware of them. I don't pay much attention to these things. I am a computer user. If these things do not take much CPU or disk space, I really don't care about them.
The OS is BSD, so you can change it if you wish, but you are on your own in doing so.

Original poster is completely right, imho.

OS X animations that are cute once are soon annoying. Worse than stealing time, they steal my attention many, many times each day. I do not want menus to slide down and up. I do not want any sliding, swooping, shrinking, expanding, wiggling transitions. I want to stay on task.

This is bad enough in OS X, but worse in applications. I am guessing all animations are calling OS X Core Animation functions. Please, Apple, allow us the option of turning off all core animation system calls, and transition directly to the new state.

This comment applies to my iPhone as well. An iPhone would be much snappier if animations could be disabled.

Here is another vote and a pair of fingers crossed that Apple might give the option whether or not to disable the animation. I'd love to be able to switch off the Spaces animation as well as all of the dock effects and window dialogs. I understand many of the points above about usability and keeping the user aware of what they're doing and where they are, but for more advanced users like myself I consider it an extreme nuisance and waste of time and resources.

One of the things that I miss most about OS 9 is the overall snappiness of the system. Granted Leopard is fast but the UI in Classic was fast and effective. I'll happily pass on the glassy, web 2.0 inspired eye candy.

Here's one more vote yet that Apple might give the option whether or not to disable the animation. My intended use for this feature is to speed up Screen Sharing applications. The animations slow down the refresh of the screen unnecessarily because it forces the application to update the screen as the windows/drop down menus are being opened/closed/minimized, etc. It is incredibly slow and frustrating even with the Adaptive refresh enabled, which one would think would be smart enough to wait until the animation is over before updating the screen, instead of wasting millions of bytes and several annoying seconds sending those useless streams to a remote client and slowing down the scree refresh. Apple, give us the option!

I want to add my vote for an option to disable Spaces animation -- and other visual effects, as well -- if we choose.

My reason for wanting get get rid of Spaces animation is because I'm currently connecting remotely to my home machine via VNC. Because of the slow speed of my DLS uplink, I see 1-3 redraws of intermediate views when switching from Space to Space. I don't see this at home, but I'm sure that's only because of the fact that everything is happening so quickly when there isn't a slow network connection between me and my computer. If we had an option to disable animations in Spaces and other software, the user experience during remote connections would be much less annoying.

I also take issue with the person above who said that we just get what we pay for when using Apple products. Of course we do. But that doesn't mean that Apple couldn't enhance or improve their products. That's the reason that Apple wants us to post bug reports and ehnancement requests. I, myself, have posted requests for features that were honored in a later release. I'm sure it wasn't only because of my requests, but also, because others posted similar requests and Apple recognized their value. Therefore, it's good and beneficial and desirable for us to request improvements from Apple.

Also, most of the time, when people ask about certain features here, it isn't to simply complain. Rather, most of us are wanting to know whether these features already exist, and if maybe we're just missing something. For example, in this Spaces animation issue, I'm sure that the original poster put his message here because he wanted to know if there is a way to disable this animation, and not to simply complain.

So to everyone reading this, I just want to say please do post your queries about features here. It might be that the feature you're looking for does indeed exist, and you'll learn about how to enable it. Or it might be that you'll find others who agree with you that it should be a feature, which will serve as a motivation to post a bug report or enhancement request.

For the love of (insert name of favorite deity here), please give us an option to turn off all animations. I too come from the Windows world, where all of that mishegoss can be disabled. I'm trying to love my new Mac, and it would really help if I could turn down the annoyance level. Some people may like the cute animations -- great. I just want to get some stuff done. (And to the people who have mentioned Spaces: I had to stop using it because the sliding back and forth was making me dizzy. Seriously.)

For spaces at least, you can install Desktop Manager:

http://developer.berlios.de/project/showfiles.php?group_id=3463

It has configurable transitions/speeds (including zero delay and no animation transitions), menubar pager, and it's FREE

Plus you can define any hotkey to transition to a new space - not just modifier+arrows

Brian,

Good point, and add one more vote. It seems like a negligible time sink originally, but it gets deadly if you are jumping back and forth.

And Nerowolfe, really? You felt it necessary to explain, condescendingly, the "reason" for multiple operating system? Did you think that this might be helpful in some way?

To kill all desktop animations, download OnyX. Run the app and click on the Parameters heading, then the Finder tab. Uncheck all of the first four boxes.

I don't like all of the animations either and the very first thing I do after installing the OS is to kill them. They're fun to watch a couple of times. After that, they're just time wasters. I much prefer windows just snap open and closed.

All OnyX does is add entries to the com.apple.finder.plist preference file in your user account to activate features that are part of OS X, but Apple doesn't include in the System Preferences as a choice. So if you delete that preference file for any reason, all of the animations will be back.

Wow! I was hesitant to install that, too. And it is crash-prone, but it seems to play well with Spaces. And can be set to be instant.

Granted, I haven't tried many cycles of reboot to make sure that nothing's fouled with the Spaces preferences, but... a cautious three thumbs up?

Thanks!

Oops. Meant to respond to the previous message, too. Thanks very much. Amazing that this still works.

For anyone else searching out there, I'm going to load this up with keywords:

Use this to:
* prevent transition effect with Spaces
* cancel transition effect with Spaces
* disable transition effect with Spaces
* Desktop Manager works to disable transition animation for Spaces
* disable spaces animation on mac

And, of course, this is on a Mac / Macintosh, running Snow Leopard, 10.6.