Reduce the Mission Control animation delay on Mac

That pause between triggering Mission Control and actually seeing your spaces is not really a "delay" macOS inserts on purpose — it is the zoom animation playing out at its default length, about a fifth of a second. Shorten the animation and the pause shrinks with it. There is no Settings toggle, but one hidden Dock key does the job in a single line.

The "delay" is the animation — shorten it

The key is expose-animation-duration. Lowering its value means the windows finish zooming to the overview sooner, so there is less wait before spaces are on screen:

# Shorten the Mission Control animation (default is about 0.2s)
defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0.1
# Restart the Dock so it takes effect
killall Dock

The very next time you open Mission Control, the spaces appear about twice as fast. To restore the original timing, delete the key so macOS reverts to its built-in default rather than a number you pinned:

# Undo — restore the default delay
defaults delete com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration
killall Dock

The same command applies on macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia.

Dial in how much delay you keep

The value is the animation length in seconds. Pick how much of the transition you want to feel:

• 0.15 — a light trim; the delay is noticeably shorter but the motion still reads smoothly.
• 0.1 — a firm cut in half; the popular choice for "no more waiting."
• 0.05 — barely there; spaces appear almost the instant you trigger it.

Re-run the write command with your chosen number and killall Dock to compare. There is no risk in trying several values back to back.

When it is not the animation

If Mission Control still feels laggy after shortening the animation, the hold-up is elsewhere and this key will not touch it:

• A hitch or stutter rather than a smooth-but-slow zoom usually means GPU load — many open windows, or a heavy dynamic wallpaper. Turning on Reduce Motion helps there, as it swaps the zoom for a lighter fade.
• Grouping windows by application can make the overview feel busier to read; you can turn that off in System Settings under Desktop & Dock, in the Mission Control section.

For a smooth-but-slow animation, though, the duration key is exactly the right fix. If your spaces also keep reshuffling and adding to the confusion, see how to stop spaces from rearranging on Mac.

Cut the delay on other Exposé views too

This key also shortens App Exposé and Show Desktop, so every overview feels quicker at once. For the broader set of Mission Control speed tweaks, see how to make Mission Control faster on Mac.