How can I disable animation when switching desktops in Lion?

I would very much like to disable the sliding animation that occurs when switching desktops via ctrl+→/← or ctrl+[number] in Lion. This was previously accomplished in previous versions with this command:

defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-swoosh-animation-off -bool YES && killall Dock

This new animation is even more slow than in Snow Leopard - nearly 1 second to switch - a real productivity killer.

Any help greatly appreciated!

Solution 1:

I posted a bug on Radar#28495374 and here is the response from Apple:

Fixed in 10.12. Go to Accessibility and Turn on Reduce Motion…

Please let us know whether the issue is resolved for you by updating your bug report.

Solution 2:

I dug deep into the app using GDB but the results were disappointing. I don't think there is a way to do this currently. Here's what I learned:

First you can change the speed of switching into Mission Control (still called Expose in the prefs). To do that just enter this command:

defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -int 0; killall Dock

And to go back to defaults run this command:

defaults delete com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration; killall Dock

Secondly there's a reference in the binary to fps-spaceswitch (frames per second spaceswitch). I messed with this for a while and also tried variations on this such as spaceswitch-animation-duration without luck.

Unfortunately (at least as of 10.7.1) there does not appear to be a way to change any settings related to this animation.

I filled a bug for this with Apple. The Radar number is 10073864. I would encourage you to also file the report at https://bugreport.apple.com/. Note in your description that it is a duplicate of the above bug report number to help the support staff categorize and prioritize this bug.

Solution 3:

I've just noticed that doing ctrl+[number] is noticeably faster than ctrl+→/← .

It's still animated but it does complete the animation in about half the time. I'm not sure if that helps but I'll throw that out there.

Solution 4:

TotalSpaces has an option to disable the animation for changing spaces:

TotalSpaces is still in beta and a bit glitchy though. There's a small delay before changing spaces, and the whole screen seems to move a few pixels horizontally during the transition. Edit: both of those have now been fixed.

Solution 5:

I noticed that it is possible to control the speed of the space-change animation when you use the Swipe gesture in OS X Lion. You can make the spaces change as fast, if not faster, than they did in Snow Leopard by doing a quick three-finger or four-finger swipe to the left or the right. Of course, it's definitely something to get accostomed to if you've always used ⌘+→/←.

This did get me thinking. Since it seems that changing spaces via arrow keys, number keys, and gestures all perform the same type of animation, there is likely a single system command that all three of these actions map to. Additionally, since they all perform the animation at a different speed, there must be a parameter that controls the animation speed. I'm not an OS X developer, so hopefully someone else with a better knowledge of the underlying functionality of OS X would be able to determine what system commands are actually running when the user performs a certain action.