Stop the Spaces swipe animation on Mac

Every time you press Control-arrow or three-finger swipe between desktops, macOS drags the whole screen sideways to the next Space — and if you move between them constantly, that slide gets old fast. There's no dedicated switch to remove just that animation, but Reduce Motion replaces it with a quick crossfade. Turn it on at System Settings → Accessibility → Display → Reduce motion.

Replace the slide with a fade

1. Open System Settings.
2. Go to Accessibility → Display.
3. Turn on Reduce motion.

Now switch desktops. Instead of the screen sweeping left or right, the current Space fades out and the next one fades in — no travel, no motion blur, just a clean cut with a soft transition. The same applies when you swipe into or out of a full-screen app, which uses the identical slide. If you keep several desktops going and jump between them dozens of times an hour, this is the single change that makes that feel effortless. It's consistent across macOS Ventura, Sonoma, and Sequoia.

The Terminal one-liner

The setting is backed by a defaults key if you'd rather script it. Apply it, then log out and back in so the change takes full effect.

# Fade between Spaces instead of sliding
defaults write com.apple.universalaccess reduceMotion -bool true

To go back to the slide, write false and log out again:

# Restore the Spaces slide
defaults write com.apple.universalaccess reduceMotion -bool false

What changes, and what stays the same

This is a common point of confusion, so to be clear: Reduce Motion changes only the animation between Spaces, not Spaces themselves. Your desktops, their arrangement, and every keyboard shortcut and gesture for moving between them keep working exactly as before — you still swipe or press Control-arrow, you just arrive without the ride. Because it's a system-wide setting, the same fade replaces:

• The slide between desktops.
• The slide into and out of full-screen apps.
• The zoom of Mission Control as it opens.

If the sideways swipe was the specific thing bugging you, this removes it without you losing a single feature of Spaces.

While you're at it, tame Spaces themselves

Removing the slide often goes hand in hand with two other Spaces annoyances. If your desktops reshuffle their order on their own, macOS has a separate switch for that under System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Mission Control, where turning off Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use keeps them in a fixed order. And if apps keep yanking you to whichever Space they opened on, that's set per app by right-clicking the Dock icon under Options → Assign To. Reduce Motion handles the transition; these settle where things live. Together they turn a jumpy multi-desktop setup into one that stays exactly where you put it.

Move between desktops faster, too

With the slide gone, the next thing to speed up is how you trigger the switch. See how to switch desktops with a keyboard shortcut on Mac to jump straight to a specific Space instead of stepping through them.