This may be related to general UI animations. I'm on an M1 MB Air as well (Big Sur) and it works instantly for me without any intermediate animations. Try Pref

This may be related to general UI animations. I'm on an M1 MB Air as well (Big Sur) and it works instantly for me without any intermediate animations. Try Preferences > Accessibility > Display > Reduce transparency. (This has consequences on how menus are rendered and the Dock will look a bit less nice, and you'll loose this blurry, semi-transparent overscroll in Safari, but you get an overall cleaner and more responsive UI.) Edit: No, I just tried with full transparencies enabled, but I still get no animation and no delays. That's not it.