I'm using macOS for more than 14 years now, in a single laptop screen setup with lots of windows open, and I'm using macOS spaces everyday to organize my windows. Switching between spaces is easy: I hit CTRL+arrow left/right, it takes no time. What takes time however, is this... macOS-native transition animation that takes a bit less than 1 second, for every single space switch. I've checked everywhere in macOS settings, asked friends with the same problem, and there's just no setting to disable this effect (even with Reduced Motion ON in Accessibility settings). This UX choice from Apple alone costs me days of my time every year, as I'm working non-stop on my SaaS business for 10h a day 5-6 days a week (Crisp for those who know about it!). I calculated that with my daily use of macOS spaces, in 6 months I'd perform 100,000 switches, which costs me the same in seconds waiting for the transition to complete. This represents almost 28 hours waiting. In 1 year, I'd have lost 2.4 days just... waiting! The Hack Fortunately, some other open-source projects discovered a hack not so long ago, which allows disabling the transition when switching spaces: it involves sending to the system a "fake" trackpad left/right swipe gesture that's faster than what's expected (faster than what a human can input via the Macbook's trackpad). Above some threshold, macOS just perform the space switch with absolutely no transition. A friend of mine, Yaël 🛸, made a quick prototype in Objective-C, and it magically worked! The Solution So, I asked my friend if we could make it a proper macOS app together, in a beautiful minimalist package, and he said yes! So, we launched Space Rabbit, a tiny 2MB fully native macOS app, that allows you to optimize macOS spaces for productivity! Space Rabbit is a full rewrite of the initial prototype in modern Swift, with a tray menu bar to configure the app, and a settings window, in a macOS app packaging. Space Rabbit can be downloaded right here: We just released V2 of the app last week, fixing a ton of little bugs, especially for dual screen setups. It's actively maintained to this day as it's my daily driver. The app is open-source: and will always be free, as it's helping improve our productivity in our daily Web Dev tasks for our main businesses. We'll be happy to implement more features from user requests, if you find this app useful and use it daily!show more

It's not the animation speed that bothers me, it's that the focus only switches when the application is completely done, which takes ages because of the easing out curve. I want there to be an animation but it needs to be handled differently.

Exactly my pain too! It's infuriating when you spend the day switching between a Web Browser and an IDE on 2 different spaces.

Iirc this behavior has been buggy since ProMotion was introduced. If you try reducing the refresh rate to 60Hz it fixes that annoying post-swipe delay and responds slightly faster. Apple never bothered to fix this.

Yes, this didnt bother me so much before I upgraded my MBP to a 16' M1 Pro. Didn't realize at the time this was a side effect/bug due to 120Hz.

It's just a copy of no ?

Copy, no, but it uses th same underlying hack, and it also improves CMD+Tab shortcuts.

So good

Thanks man!!

this is the exact reason i've been avoiding macos windows i'm downloading space rabbit right now!

\o/ let me know if that helped and if there's anything we can add to the app :)

This is the path with this kind of stuff on Mac for the last 15 years: 1) fix a basic QoL feature that should have been there the whole time with an app 2) os update!! your app now requires System Integrity disabled. Sorry!! 3) os update!! your app doesnt work anymore!!! sorry!!!

Should check out Aerospace. It's instant, and more powerful ;)

omg TYSM

\o/ !!!

solved largely with Aerospace too! also, in order to go from space 1 to space 4, you would have to jump through 2 and 3 first. aerospace lets you jump immediately and arbitrarily. worth giving it a shot!

Does it with work with trackpad space switch or only keyboard shortcuts?

It only works with keyboard shortcuts, it's unfortunately impossible to disable the switch animation when using trackpad input.

Okk cool will be trying it out

Let's reverse your numbers. 100000 switches over 6 months. This gives around 800 switches a day. At some point I measured this with karabiner. The question was: how many times I switch windows in a working day. Turned out it was around 950 times a day (averaged from 3 days) So our numbers are rather close. Now the crazy part. If it takes you modest 0,5 sec to switch windows it compounds to - 8 minutes per day - 3 hours per month - 36 hours per year So every year I spent almost full work week (8h a day) just to switch windows 🤯 I could be on a beach for a week but I spend this on cmd+tab. How do you use spaces so much? Multiple projects? Or you have 1 space per task?

Multiple spaces per task, so I have browser full screen and IDE full screen and I need to constantly make a change in IDE, switch to browser, back and forth.

I have been doing the same setup for a while. The animation was one thing, but I was always lost in too many spaces. I tried using cmd+1, cmd+2 to switch to the right "space" immediately. But spaces have all those weird behaviours. Like window opening up on "random" space. Do you have similar experience?

There is also beautiful

I make everything full screen and just swipe. If I need a side-by-side, i use a second monitor.

it seems like @raycast already baked it into their app. switching spaces through raycast feels instant without reducing motion and other tweaks anyway, great work!

Great idea! That delay was the reason I started using other systems. I currently use Raycast with keyboard shortcuts to bring up apps and hide them

Hero…! 🙏🏻

I complain about this every day. Luckily, Sebastian is working back at Apple, and I think they’ll fix it. It’s maddening. This animation is so bad

If there was such a large ROI from this, then simply buying another monitor would be even more efficient than switching between virtual deskops… most reasonably sized portable screens are less than $100 USD.

Yeah, that's what I also do from time to time (have a SOTSU portable monitor). But when you're in cafés or coworks, it's just too tedious to unpack and then pack again. I like the freedom & simplicity that 1 single laptop display provides.

So bad. These uncomfortable, jittery movements take years off your life. Just watching your video made me so anxious that I lost three years of my lifespan.

This is legit! Loving it already after 1 day's use.

Bro, yes

Tbh real cool but now im use to @raycast its far faster interface

Works great! Any plans to be able to hide the menu bar icon and make it available via Homebrew?

The feature has been implemented in and update will be released today. Will definitely make a tap at some point yes!

saving days of my life a second at a time

THIS IS BEAUTIFUL! It's so fast I don't even lose train of thought! 1000 stars. This is somethign that's bothered me for YEARS

Space rabbit is very cool! Great job

I'm fortunate to have land on this one! Contributed to Homebrew-Cask to support your initiative

Thank you so much! That's very helpful!

Thank you!

Dope! Thank you guys 🙏🐇

🐇

FINALLY AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA this has been one of my most important gripes with macOS, FINALLY!!!!!!!!!! THANKS FOR MAKING THIS!!!!

@marckohlbrugge Hey! I’ve also been working on some significant tooling to improve how I use macOS Spaces ( Do you mind if I incorporate this into it? I was actually trying to figure out how to do this ~2 or 3 months ago w/ Opus but we were never able to do so.

@marckohlbrugge Sure, it's open source!

let's make one thing clear – you are an idiot for caring for such a stupid thing making me also an idiot because this is SO COOL xD

@rodrigorojop Omg!!! I hate those transition. Finally! Thanks for sharing

already saved me 3hrs, bro's the goat!