4 ms·

What about that interminable animation every time you fullscreen a window or switch between fullscreen windows? It should be at least twice as fast and there's

• rr842j 3y ago
  I still have to meet anybody that is not at a minimum annoyed by the macos animations. I literally stopped using the spaces feature because of that!. The default animation got me dizzy all the time, but even with that one disabled via accessibility settings they keep a terribly slow fading animation. It's absolutely ridiculous for a professional machine to impose these things on you.
  • surfpel 3y ago
    Those animations are there to help people maintain a spacial understanding of their GUI. Most people are not highly technical power users who get annoyed by the small delays, this is a bias I see a lot on HN. I do agree that their accessibility options should allow for more customization of animations, though. I use ‘magnet’ for window control and it’s instant. Highly recommend. Just wish switching between desktops could be made instant too.
    • least 3y ago
      It can be... if you disable SIP. Yabai has many of these fixes that exists, even if you don't use the auto tiling features[1]. [1] https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai/wiki/Disabling-System-Integrity-Protection https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai/wiki/Disabling-System-I...
  • lostlogin 3y ago
    The Time Machine one is amazing. I go there by accident sometimes, usually when trying to work out why it isn’t working (this is a whole other issue) and it’s ludicrous.
  • egypturnash 3y ago
    I'm absolutely fine with them. I use Spaces all the time - mostly by hitting f3 and clicking on the screen thumbnail at the top, rather than control-arrowing or control-number. HN has a lot of hate for these animations but I don't think I've ever seen anyone bitching about them elsewhere.
    • fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
      Yeah, I’ve never had issues with the animations. And, additionally, I’ve always found that the animations make a UI feel finished by making state changes more apparent.
    • lynndotpy 3y ago
      > HN has a lot of hate for these animations but I don't think I've ever seen anyone bitching about them elsewhere. Because MacOS (and iOS) are the only major OSes that don't let you disable them.
  • howinteresting 3y ago
    macOS is designed for mainstream users, not power users who want an efficient workflow with minimum distractions. This is why I stopped complaining about macOS and just use Linux.
    • wryanzimmerman 3y ago
      I’m a power user who wants minimal distractions… OSX provides that just fine, my workflow is nearly identical between OSX and Linux because it’s just a full screen terminal.
      • howinteresting 3y ago
        Glad it works for you.
    • yongjik 3y ago
      Only if you're very lucky with Linux, or your definition of distraction does not include hours spent on fixing sleep and hibernation, finding the right input method among several that keep getting deprecated, fixing pixel scaling with multiple monitors, and other fun stuff. I still have a Linux Desktop that I boot up from time to time, but I've pretty much given up at this point. My time is more valuable than that.
      • howinteresting 3y ago
        I've never had a serious issue with Pop OS on both a desktop and a Thinkpad. Linux does have some issues (GNOME has some pretty noticeable UI issues) but overall I'm much happier with it than I ever was with macOS.
      • xdennis 3y ago
        [flagged]
      • bombolo 3y ago
        > I still have a Linux Desktop that I boot up from time to time And by that you obviously mean you haven't booted it up in the past 15 years, judging from what your complaints are.
  • bryceneal 3y ago
    I feel the same way. I would much prefer no animation at all, and an instant transition between spaces. Apparently this is possible with yabai (https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai), but it requires disabling system integrity protection which I am personally uncomfortable with.
  • jwr 3y ago
    Same here. I don't use spaces because I can't stand the animations, and they can't be turned off.
• cassianoleal 3y ago
  I like the menu bar, and don't mind the Dock. Wholly agree about the space switching animation. At the very least, I'd have liked the focus to change when I start switching - not when the animation ends. This way at least I could start typing and pressing shortcuts without having to wait. Not perfect, but better.
• fwlr 3y ago
  defaults write -g NSWindowResizeTime -float 0.01 should fix that (disclaimer - haven’t tested this in a long time, may need to restart apps or whole os to see effect). In general, if something about macOS annoys you and there isn’t a preference setting to fix it, googling “defaults write com.apple <thing you dislike>” will often find a solution. Writing with `defaults write` lets you alter nearly any value in the OS, very few things are hardcoded. A word of advice if you start messing around with this stuff - you will generally want to follow up any `defaults write com.apple.foo` command with `killall Foo` to force restart that component, as writing directly with the defaults utility will not be reflected in real time, unlike what you are used to with changing things in System Preferences.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • extr 3y ago
    Not really. Tons of these preferences are gated behind SIP, something you can't turn off if it's a work laptop.
  • ubercow13 3y ago
    It doesn't affect the fullscreen animation.
  • modeless 3y ago
    I wish you were right, but no. I've tried that one and a lot more besides. Go ahead and test it yourself, and let me know if you find a different one that actually works.
    • fwlr 3y ago
      I tried it out and you’re right, it no longer works (it definitely worked for me several years ago). As far as I know, macOS even up to Ventura is still built on Cocoa, so the answer should still have an NS prefix. I’ll have a look and see if I can find anything.
• vbezhenar 3y ago
  > And the top menu bar was good for the original Macintosh with a tiny screen but it makes no sense on a 4k display with many different app windows showing simultaneously. My display is 27" with resolution of 1280x720. I rarely use multiple windows.
• derefr 3y ago
  Maybe it's inherently slow, because it's a "loading transition" like in video games. Takes a second for the new backing virtual desktop to be allocated, and for the window to potentially grab new assets to redraw (think: resizing iMovie window larger ⇒ larger timeline preview ⇒ re-rendering timeline thumbnails); and the animation plays on the old desktop while this is going on in the background on the new desktop, so that when the animation completes, the new desktop is "ready" for an atomic single-frame cut-over, rather than ugly pop-in happening and the app still being blocked on input. Probably also has some constraints imposed upon it due to requiring that virtual desktops transition smoothly over Screen Sharing, where texture assets are being sent and buffered to a remote compositor.
  • modeless 3y ago
    These rationalizations don't justify it. The animation still has ugly pop-in and jerkiness despite being so slow and despite the fact that most apps can relayout and redraw their window in a tiny fraction of the time that animation takes. And screen sharing shouldn't make things slow when you're not using it. Anyway, I'd trade a bit of pop-in for a faster computer if that was necessary. There's no excuse to not offer that choice even as a power user "defaults write" option.
    • derefr 3y ago
      > most apps can relayout and redraw their window in a tiny fraction of the time that animation takes Re-rendering to the same compositor target buffer (when you e.g. resize a window), and allocating new textures in (potentially) new formats under control of a new compositor target buffer, are different orders-of-magnitudes of work. Think about how much delay there is from the point you plug in an external display, to the point your windows finish "popping over" onto it and it becomes usable. Allocating a new virtual desktop and moving a window to become fullscreen on it, is doing 90% of that same work. Why does each virtual desktop have its own compositor and own target buffer? Because each virtual desktop has its own active display mode it's operating under: its own display resolution, its own bitplane format [think RGB vs BGR displays], different memory allocation constraints depending on whether it's currently being mirrored / screen-shared or not, maybe allocated in the VRAM of a different GPU if it's being drawn on a monitor plugged into a discrete GPU's HDMI/DP socket, etc. This "distinct target buffers with their own compositors" approach is also why you can't span windows across displays on macOS 10.9+. (Before that, macOS used a different approach, that allowed for single virtual desktops that span multiple monitors, but where this would use one big target buffer, formatted to the lowest-common denominator format acceptable to all display targets. So if you plugged in a shitty external display like a 720p projector, and "extended" your desktop to it, then the whole compositor target buffer would get reformatted, and so your internal display's resolution/color depth/refresh rate would decrease.) > Anyway, I'd trade a bit of pop-in for a faster computer if that was necessary. My point is that this wouldn't be the trade-off. Instead, you'd switch over to the new fullscreen view, half-rendered — and then it would very likely still take just as long to finish re-rendering and accept input as if there was no animation. You can actually try this "experience" out for yourself: try having an external display connected; opening Mission Control; and then dragging the focused virtual desktop from your internal display, over to the external display (or vice-versa.) It takes about 3 seconds before all texture assets finish re-allocating in the new compositor target buffer's texture format and re-rendering; and because there's no animation to paper over this case, it just feels unresponsive, like the whole shell has stalled for 3 seconds.