Hold Shift Key to Use Launchpad in Slow Motion

Nov 13, 2011 - 12 Comments

Hold Shift for Slow Motion in Launchpad

Like most of the other transition effects in Mac OS X, you can hold down the shift key to force the animation to render in slow motion. In the case with Launchpad, this will cause the app icons to slowly rise out of the background, or for the Launchpad screens to very slowly switch between one another.

Trying this out for yourself is simple enough, just hold down the Shift key and open Launchpad either by clicking the dock icon or using a four-fingered trackpad pinch, the slow motion effect is obvious enough that you can’t miss it when it’s working.

Launchpad in Slow Motion

This is mostly an eye candy trick but it can be useful for taking screenshots of the transitions, and there’s probably some other purpose out there too.

If you were wondering, it doesn’t stack with the blur effect.

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Posted by: Paul Horowitz in Mac OS, Tips & Tricks

12 Comments

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  1. Les says:

    John, I have the EXACT SAME problem. I want my freaking multi-selection back!!!!!!

  2. John says:

    Great. now how do you TURN IT OFF?

    ctrl+shift+up iand ctrl+shift+down interferes with keyboard bindings in Sublime Text, and I’d rather not remap Mission Control or Sublime Text keybindings.

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  5. Tom says:

    Very Cool Thx!!

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  8. Marcos says:

    Cool!! :D

  9. iGMX says:

    The shift key trick works with almost all OS X animations since 10.0 afaik: minimize and maximize windows, Dashboard, etc.

  10. Chip says:

    haha! nice…

  11. Khai says:

    Nice trick. Clicking on the background while holding the shift key also makes the icons to slowly disappear.

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