Speed up the Mission Control animation on Mac

When you trigger Mission Control, macOS spends about a fifth of a second zooming your windows out to the overview. That zoom is set by a hidden Dock preference called expose-animation-duration, and there is no switch for it in System Settings. Lower the value in Terminal and the windows fan out noticeably faster — snappy instead of leisurely.

Speed it up in Terminal

The default duration is roughly 0.2 seconds. Setting it to 0.1 halves the animation without making it disappear entirely:

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

The Dock relaunches in a blink and Mission Control is quicker on the very next trigger. Because this is an undocumented key with no Settings equivalent, the clean way to undo it is to delete the key so macOS returns to its built-in default:

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

This works on macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia. Deleting the key is cleaner than writing 0.2 back, since it removes your override entirely rather than pinning a value.

Pick your speed

The number is the animation length in seconds, so smaller is faster. A few useful points on the dial:

• 0.2 — the macOS default, for reference.
• 0.12 — clearly quicker but still smooth; a safe first try.
• 0.1 — snappy, and the value most people settle on.
• 0 — instant, no animation at all; fast but a little jarring.

Re-run the defaults write line with a different number followed by killall Dock to experiment until it feels right — there is no harm in trying several.

It speeds more than Mission Control

This one key governs the whole family of Exposé zooms, so lowering it also quickens App Exposé (spreading out one app's windows) and Show Desktop. That is usually a bonus — the same brisk feel across every overview gesture. Note that it does not touch the slide animation when you move between spaces with Control+Arrow; that is a separate animation. If a fully calm, animation-light Mac is the real goal, the accessibility route is different but related: see how to reduce motion on Mac, which cross-fades instead of zooming.

Want the whole Dock to feel quicker?

The Mission Control zoom is one of several Dock animations you can tighten. For auto-hide timing and the launch bounce, see how to speed up the Dock on Mac.