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When an OSX window is promoted to be full screen there is a one second transition animation. How can this be disabled system wide? We would like the transition from small window to full screen to be instantaneous - except for the unavoidable lag from rendering.

Here are two for examples of solutions that DONT work, so no need to repeat them:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1691359 http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/1plzmq/is_there_a_way_to_speed_up_or_skip_fullscreen/

Most popular "solutions" are two:

Terminal

Type " defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAutomaticWindowAnimationsEnabled -bool NO"

Hit enter

Close all applications before you do this to make sure the setting propagates. Any app running when you make this change will need to be restarted for the changes to take effect.

In reality, NSAutomaticWindowAnimationsEnabled doesn't effect OS X 10.9 at all. Nothing will change however you like to set it.

There is a app called TotalSpace (or Spaces) that I know is able to disable some transitional animations.

URL: http://totalspaces.binaryage.com

In reality, Total Space can disable some animation switching between screens, but when you play a video on, say Yahoo Screen, the animation from a small video to a full screen video still remains - and in fact that is the actually annoying animation (takes about 0.5 second to complete therefore breaks the video experience).

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  • Seems this isn't possible currently.
    – grg ♦
    Commented Apr 25, 2014 at 19:41
  • This problem will be solved indirectly when 10.10 is released since it appears that it will remove this button entirely and just have full screen and minimize commands to alter the size of an existing window.
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Sep 18, 2014 at 15:58
  • 1
    10.10 shows the same behavior for me. My goal is to fullscreen Youtube videos in Firefox instantly without interrupting the playback.
    – Charlie Gorichanaz
    Commented Nov 15, 2014 at 7:12
  • Consider adding your +1 to this question to get more visibility on the issue: discussions.apple.com/message/28734339#28734339
    – jabalsad
    Commented Aug 15, 2015 at 12:58
  • Add this to the list of reasons to go back to Mavericks or earlier!
    – Charlie Gorichanaz
    Commented Sep 15, 2015 at 0:28

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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macOS Sierra (10.12) introduced "reduce motion".

Go to System Preferences > Accessibility > Display and check the box labeled Reduce motion.

I find this makes things much more pleasant ;)

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3
  • 24
    Shame it's still kinda slow
    – Mythical Fish
    Commented Oct 6, 2017 at 12:19
  • 1
    Saved my eyes and my brain
    – insign
    Commented Sep 3, 2019 at 22:19
  • 3
    This replaces the animation with a transparency fade which is just as long and looks even more distracting. Not sure if I'm missing something?
    – cdleonard
    Commented Aug 12, 2020 at 14:49
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What I do for this is:

Edit the Info.plist file for each application I want to run in full screen mode and add this key:

    <key>LSUIPresentationMode</key>
    <integer>4</integer>

The Info.plist of the application is located at /Applications/APPLICATION_NAME.app/Contents/Info.plist. For example for Chrome: /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/Info.plist

If you just open this file and you have Xcode will open with the Xcode editor. I prefer to edit with a plain text editor like sublime or text mate, it's just a simple XML file.

Some applications when you edit this file will fail in the checksum and will ask infinite times to allow access to the osx keychain. Chrome or HipChat for example will have this issue when you edit the Info.plist. To solve this issue just open your Keychain Access and search the application with this issue and edit. right or double click on the application, click on the Access Control tab and then check Allow all applications to access this item -> Save Changes and the just restart the application. Works on 10.8.x and 10.9.x

Screenshot of my chrome Info.plist file:

enter image description here

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7
  • This worked for getting MacVim proper fullscreen, thanks for posting!
    – richtaur
    Commented Nov 25, 2014 at 0:56
  • Could you provide some explanation of the code, i.e. what does <integer>4</integer> mean in this context? I assume it is a code specific to LSUIPresentationMode, but what does it mean and are there other codes?
    – keflavich
    Commented May 18, 2015 at 6:35
  • 1
    There are five possible values from 0 to 4: Here you can find more info developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/General/Reference/…
    – richard
    Commented May 19, 2015 at 13:54
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    Using Firefox 37.0.2 on OS X 10.10.3 this did nothing to speed up or disable the fullscreen animation. All it does is exactly what the documentation says it would do: Hide the menu bar and the dock. This is another candidate for the "does not work; do not suggest" section.
    – Basti
    Commented Jun 8, 2015 at 10:55
  • YES!!! Unfortunately this method cannot be applied to Finder.
    – aeroxy
    Commented Aug 17, 2015 at 18:44
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I'm going to go out on a limb and say that there is no hidden default to change this. Short of patching the Finder code, you'll have to live with the animation delay on 10.9 that's programmed to take about a second. (n.b. on my Mac Pro, it appears to take 1/3 of a second for the animation so perhaps it's indirectly related to GPU/CPU loading and power...)

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