How to Re-Enable Slow Motion Effects on MacOS

If you’re a long time Mac user, you might recall the Slow Motion effect that could be applied by holding the Shift key while minimizing and maximizing windows, as well as for other animations like opening Launchpad or using Mission Control. Some of the fun eye-candy effects on Mac go way the early days of Mac OS X (and we covered some of these all the way back in 2007!), but at some point in much later MacOS development, Apple has turned the optional Slow Motion features off. But, with a little defaults command magic, you can re-enable the Slow Motion effects on MacOS, even in the latest versions of MacOS Sequoia.

How to Enable Slow Motion Effects on MacOS

To re-enable the optional Slow Motion effects on the Mac, here’s all you need to do:

1. Open the Terminal application and enter the following command:
   defaults write com.apple.dock slow-motion-allowed -bool YES;killall Dock

2. Hit Return, which will cause the Dock to relaunch, and the Slow Motion effects will be enabled again
3. Now hold down the Shift Key while clicking to minimize a window, maximize a window, opening Launchpad, activating Mission Control, and using other similar Mac features that have animation effects – the effect will now be drawn in slow motion

The Slow Motion effect applied to animations is entirely for eye candy and to appreciate the effects themselves, there is no real obvious practical purpose for it, but it is kind of fun.

Remember, the Slow Motion effects will only be active if you’re holding down the Shift key while activating a feature that has an animation attached to it, like minimizing/maximizing windows, opening Mission Control, opening Launchpad, and similar. The slow motion effect is not on all the time (though there was an old trick to permanently enable slow motion, most Mac users would not find that desirable anyway since it’s quite slow), only when using the Shift key modifier.

This is a fun and relatively simple trick that some longtime Mac users may appreciate, harking back to the earlier days of MacOS when there was a bit more whimsy and fun applied to the operating system.

Thanks to daringfireball for pointing out this neat trick for modern MacOS versions.