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The best thing I have found on both Windows 10 and Android to improve usability is to go into the accessibility or ease of access settings and disable animation

The best thing I have found on both Windows 10 and Android to improve usability is to go into the accessibility or ease of access settings and disable animations. This makes both systems so much snappier and responsive. On Windows it makes the Start menu fast and comfortable - instead of having some things slide in from one direction and others from another direction, the Start menu just appears instantly. I used to use Start10, but after disabling animation and deleting the tiles I don't need, I'm just as happy with the Windows native Start menu. I mostly just use the type-and-search rather than clicking on icons, so the less fanfare the Start menu presents, the better. A couple of other settings I like in Windows 10 are also in the ease of access settings under the cursor and pointer section. I changed the cursor thickness to 3 for my high-DPI displays, and found a nice solid black mouse pointer there too - much easier to see than the default white one. Whatever OS you are on, take a look through the accessibility settings. That is where they hide a lot of the good stuff.

GordonS 8y ago
I especially hate the smooth text cursor movement in Microsoft Word, where it even animated the movement as you type characters - I find it really off-putting. Thankfully, disabling animations, as you describe, also disables this "feature". Annoyingly, after some Windows updates this setting is reverted though.
- Stratoscope 8y ago
  Yes, that cursor animation is just awful. What kind of User Experience Designer thought it was a good idea to take a discrete event - typing a character or using a cursor key - and turn it into a laggy animation? No other application does this. It's simply a ridiculous idea. Adding insult to injury, Word has a "Provide feedback with animation" checkbox in the Word Options/Ease of Access panel. But turning off this checkbox does nothing! You still get the animations unless you turn off the systemwide animation setting. Wait, there is another application that does this, and it's even worse: Excel. By default, Excel animates the cell selection border even if you click on another cell far away. Yes, it starts an animation at the cell you were on and animates it all the way to the cell you clicked on. This is incredibly stupid: when I click on a cell, that is the cell my attention is on. I don't care about the cell that was previously selected, or seeing an animation go diagonally or whatever direction from there to the cell I clicked. Why in the world did anyone think this animation was helpful? Excel also does not respond to the systemwide animation disable, but thankfully it does have the animation checkbox like Word in its own options panel, and that one works.
aarongolliver 8y ago
Disabling animations in Android can have some surprising æffects. For me the little "car" in Lyft/Uber refuse to budge without closing & reopening the app. Some status indicators go haywire too (like loading bubbles in youtube, and fake frequency histograms in music apps). My laptop disables animations in low power mode and ironically that makes it feel faster than "performance" mode.
mih 8y ago
Great tip. The animations never bothered me much, but upon turning it and transparency off, things are so much snappier. I have absolutely no need for them on my work machine.
- 52-6F-62 8y ago
  I’m probably a glut, but I can’t help but like the transparency features even when working.
satysin 8y ago
One complaint I have about macOS is that there is no way to disable animations. There are a couple of options to reduce motion but nothing to totally remove them all.
ilmiont 8y ago
This is always the first change I make on every new OS install I use... all of them. And in every app and web app that lets me do it. * I neither need or want every little thing to be animated. It just distracts me and slows me down. * Android I've turned all the devtools animations scale settings down to 0x to disable pretty much everything.
- Raphmedia 8y ago
  Only a few browsers support it and even less websites respect it but you can set your browser to "reduced motion" mode some websites will stop using animations. https://caniuse.com/#search=prefers-reduced-motion https://caniuse.com/#search=prefers-reduced-motion

GordonS 8y ago

I especially hate the smooth text cursor movement in Microsoft Word, where it even animated the movement as you type characters - I find it really off-putting. Thankfully, disabling animations, as you describe, also disables this "feature". Annoyingly, after some Windows updates this setting is reverted though.

Stratoscope 8y ago
Yes, that cursor animation is just awful. What kind of User Experience Designer thought it was a good idea to take a discrete event - typing a character or using a cursor key - and turn it into a laggy animation? No other application does this. It's simply a ridiculous idea. Adding insult to injury, Word has a "Provide feedback with animation" checkbox in the Word Options/Ease of Access panel. But turning off this checkbox does nothing! You still get the animations unless you turn off the systemwide animation setting. Wait, there is another application that does this, and it's even worse: Excel. By default, Excel animates the cell selection border even if you click on another cell far away. Yes, it starts an animation at the cell you were on and animates it all the way to the cell you clicked on. This is incredibly stupid: when I click on a cell, that is the cell my attention is on. I don't care about the cell that was previously selected, or seeing an animation go diagonally or whatever direction from there to the cell I clicked. Why in the world did anyone think this animation was helpful? Excel also does not respond to the systemwide animation disable, but thankfully it does have the animation checkbox like Word in its own options panel, and that one works.

aarongolliver 8y ago

Disabling animations in Android can have some surprising æffects. For me the little "car" in Lyft/Uber refuse to budge without closing & reopening the app. Some status indicators go haywire too (like loading bubbles in youtube, and fake frequency histograms in music apps). My laptop disables animations in low power mode and ironically that makes it feel faster than "performance" mode.

mih 8y ago

Great tip. The animations never bothered me much, but upon turning it and transparency off, things are so much snappier. I have absolutely no need for them on my work machine.

52-6F-62 8y ago
I’m probably a glut, but I can’t help but like the transparency features even when working.

satysin 8y ago

One complaint I have about macOS is that there is no way to disable animations. There are a couple of options to reduce motion but nothing to totally remove them all.

ilmiont 8y ago

This is always the first change I make on every new OS install I use... all of them. And in every app and web app that lets me do it. * I neither need or want every little thing to be animated. It just distracts me and slows me down. * Android I've turned all the devtools animations scale settings down to 0x to disable pretty much everything.

Raphmedia 8y ago
Only a few browsers support it and even less websites respect it but you can set your browser to "reduced motion" mode some websites will stop using animations. https://caniuse.com/#search=prefers-reduced-motion https://caniuse.com/#search=prefers-reduced-motion