3 Tips Using Terminal Command to Speed up Your Mac

Much like the OS for iPhones and iPads, OS X has seen many upgrades over the last few cycles where fancier system animation has been built in to make it more user friendly. These system animations are great but can take a bit off the processing power and make your GUI slow if you are running OS X on an older Macbook or Mac. In this post we will highlight a few tips that can speed up your Mac using basic terminal commands.

Mission Control

This has seen a lot of changes over the years. You can use the following terminal command to speed up the animation time for mission control.

Open your terminal and type in:

defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration – float 0

This command will disable animation for mission control.

Creating New Windows

Many apps tend to zoom in from the center of the screen when trying to create new windows. This can cause some old Macs to run slow. This animation also seems quite unnecessary. You can shut this animation down with the following command via your terminal:

defaults write –g NSAutomaticWindowAnimationsEnabled –bool NO

Faster dock

On a slower mac, the time it takes for the dock to slide in an out of view can be sometimes annoying. You can easily get rid of this delay by using the following command. This will make your dock appear and disappear instantly on your machine.

defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier –int 0; killall Dock

Although there are many commands out there that can help you with reducing slow animations on your OS X, we thought you might like these basic three since most people use the Mission control and dock on a pretty regular basis.

One good utility out there is the TinkerTool, using which you can easily disable animations for Mail, Fade in fade out effects and accelerate the animation of opening and closing sheets.

Lastly, you can easily reverse the changes of the commands shown here by using the defaults delete command. For example, the create new windows animation setting that you removed in the second option above can be easily restored by using the command:

defaults delete –g NSAutomaticWindowAnimationsEnabled

So go ahead and give it a try. Let us know what are some of your most popular terminal commands that you use for dealing with slow animations on your Mac.

SK( Managing Editor )

Obsessed with tech since the early arrival of A/UX on Apple, Sudz (SK) is responsible for the editorial direction of AppleToolBox. He is based out of Los Angeles, CA.

Sudz specializes in covering all things macOS, having reviewed dozens of OS X and macOS developments over the years.

In a former life, Sudz worked helping Fortune 100 companies with their technology and business transformation aspirations.