With hidden options, you can speed up Android display transitions to launch your apps faster.
Android uses animations and transitions in its interface. It’s nice, but it wastes a little time when browsing menus or launching applications. However, there are options reserved for developers which allow you to influence the speed of these transitions, or even to remove them completely.
- First, you need to activate Android Developer Mode. To do this, go to the system settings by tapping on the small gear-shaped icon, accessible from the top of the screen. Swipe down vertically from the top of the screen (once or twice depending on the device).
- In settings, tap About the phone for Android 7. In Android 8, tap System, then on About the phone (the operation and the titles can vary according to the overlays of the constructors). Then tap 7 times in a row on Build number (or Version number). Abracadabra! You have enabled Android options for developers.
- They are accessible before or after the option About the phone under the name of Development options Where Developer options. Tap on this option and scroll down to get to the three entries named Window animation scale, Scale animation transitions and Animation duration scale.
- These three entries generally have x 1 as the value but you can change them by tapping on it. Opt for x 0.5 for twice as fast transitions or disabled to remove the animations.
We tested the total disabling of animations with a OnePlus 6 smartphone. We measured the total time to launch 10 applications (Facebook, Instagram, Gmail, Weather Pro, Camera, SNCF, Photo gallery, 01net, Spotify and Real Racing 3) . By disabling transitions, we went from 44 seconds to 33 seconds, a gain of 8 seconds. This gain will depend on the smartphone, the version of Android and the manufacturer’s overlay. With a mid-range model, the Honor 7A, we went from 1 min 40 s to 1 min 38 s. This very low gain can be explained by the overlay of the smartphone and by Honor’s choice to set the default setting to x 0.5 instead of x 1.
Feel free to test the two possible settings (x 0.5 and disabled) to see if you notice any differences in the navigation and launching of the applications.
To return to the default values, turn off the switch Enabled in the Developer options. They will no longer have any influence on your smartphone.