Change the Dock Minimize Effect on Mac (Genie or Scale)

Every time you press Cmd+M or click the yellow button, macOS plays a minimize animation. There are two official options — Genie and Scale — and switching between them takes about ten seconds. Here's how to change the effect in System Settings or Terminal, and which one to pick if you want your Mac to feel faster.

Change it in System Settings

1. Open System Settings → Desktop & Dock.
2. Find Minimize windows using near the top of the Dock section.
3. Choose Genie Effect or Scale Effect.
4. Test it: click any window and press Cmd+M.

The change applies instantly — no restart, no logout. The same menu exists on Ventura, Sonoma, and Sequoia. Whichever effect you pick applies everywhere windows minimize: the yellow traffic-light button, Cmd+M, and double-clicking a title bar if you've set Double-click a window's title bar to (in the same Desktop & Dock pane) to Minimize.

Change it in Terminal

Useful for setup scripts, or if you just prefer the keyboard:

# switch to the Scale effect
defaults write com.apple.dock mineffect -string scale
killall Dock

# switch back to Genie (the macOS default)
defaults write com.apple.dock mineffect -string genie
killall Dock

You can also run defaults delete com.apple.dock mineffect followed by killall Dock to clear the key entirely, which returns you to the Genie default. To check what's currently active, run defaults read com.apple.dock mineffect — if it errors with “does not exist,” you're on the untouched Genie default. The preference is stored per user in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist, so it won't affect other accounts on the same Mac, and killall Dock is completely safe: the Dock relaunches itself in about a second without touching your open windows.

Genie vs Scale: which should you use?

Functionally the two are identical — same trigger, same destination, same restore behavior. The difference is purely in how the trip is drawn:

• Genie squeezes the window through a curved funnel into the Dock icon. It's the classic Mac flourish — charming the first hundred times, and visually the “slowest” of the two because your eye tracks the curve.
• Scale shrinks the window in a straight line toward the Dock. Same idea, no theatrics. Most people who switch describe it as snappier, even though the durations are similar — a straight path simply reads faster than a curved one.

If you minimize windows all day, Scale is the practical choice. It's also the kinder option when you're screen-sharing or recording, where Genie's warping can look messy at low frame rates.

Both effects play in reverse when you click a minimized window to restore it, so you're choosing the round trip, not just the exit.

Want it faster still?

The effect picker changes the shape of the animation, not its speed — macOS exposes no supported duration control for the minimize animation itself. If even Scale feels sluggish, the bigger win is changing what happens rather than how it's drawn: turn on Minimize windows into application icon in the same settings pane so windows tuck into the app icon with less visual travel, or skip minimizing entirely and hide apps with Cmd+H, which is instant and has no animation at all. Heavy multitaskers usually find they stop caring about the minimize effect once most windows go through Cmd+H or Mission Control instead.

There's a hidden third effect

Apple actually ships a third animation that never appears in System Settings. See how to enable the hidden Suck effect — it pulls windows into the Dock like water down a drain. It has lived in the Dock's preferences for two decades and still works on every modern version of macOS.