How to disable system animations without jailbreaking to speed up your iPhone and iPad

BY Killian Bell

Published 9 Mar 2016

iOS 9 app switcher

iOS 9 might seem pretty fast and responsive to you, but did you know it can be even faster? If you disable system animations using this neat trick — which requires no jailbreak — you get apps that open and close so fast you won’t have time to lift your finger from the screen.

There have been countless jailbreak tweaks that make this hack possible, but of course, not everyone likes to jailbreak. Those who don’t have to just accept the default system animations, which seem painfully slow after you’ve experienced iOS without them.

Fortunately, now those who don’t like jailbreaking can. Here are the steps you need to follow to disable system animations on a stock iOS 9 device. Note that restarting your device will restore the animations again, so that’s all you need to do if you decide you’d prefer to keep them.

  1. Open the Settings app, tap General, then Accessibility
  2. Tap AssistiveTouch, then tap the toggle to enable this feature
  3. Return to your home screen and drag the white AssistiveTouch button to the bottom right corner
  4. Swipe down on your screen to get into Spotlight
  5. Swipe back up to dismiss it again
  6. Repeat steps 5 and 6 for around 20 times

“For those that have still not gotten it to work… Start off with the assistive touch button in the right hand lower corner of the screen. Every time you slide down in spotlight search make sure you wait for the assistive touch button to move on top of the keyboard and continuously repeat steps 3 and 4,” explains cn98 on Reddit.

This process causes the Springboard animation engine to become “confused.” As a result, it is disabled, and you have an iOS device with no system animations. Now try opening and closing apps and using the app switcher and check how just how fast it is.

If you want to see the changes without trying this glitch yourself, watch the demonstration below from 9to5Mac, which also walks you through the steps above so that you can follow along on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

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Once again, restarting your iOS device reactivates the animation engine, so system animations will return. You can do this if you decide you prefer iOS with the animations, but repeating the steps above will disable them again for those who prefer the speed improvements.

[Reddit via 9to5Mac]