Cameron Summerson
One of the first things I do on every new Android phone is change the animation speed. Why? Because it makes the phone feel so much faster. Even the fastest phones can benefit from this tweak—once you get used to it, the stock animation speed feels sluggish in comparison.
Welcome to Quick Tips, a series where we offer tips and tricks that aren’t necessarily new but may have gone under the radar or otherwise not be well known.
But this also isn’t a tweak that you’ll find in the system settings—not out of the box anyway. This setting is actually in the hidden Developer Options menu, which can be enabled by tapping on the Build Number (found in the About Phone menu on most phones) seven times. Once enabled, you’ll have a new entry titled “Developer Options” in your phone’s settings menu.
Note: The Build Number and Developer Options locations may vary depending on your phone’s manufacturer. You might need to look up a guide specific to your phone if you’re having a hard time finding them.
Once you have the Developer Options menu open, scroll down to the Drawing section. From there, find the three Window, Transition, and Animator Scale options. Change them all from 1x to .5x and you’ll feel an immediate difference.
You can, of course, turn animations off if you want, but I personally find that to be a jarring and choppy experience. You can test it out if you want and see how it feels. You can always change it back if you don’t like it.
