During an article about the Galaxy S21, where I explained why I wouldn’t continue with Samsung’s newest smartphone and go back to the Pixel 5, I noticed that one of the little things that bothered me was removing an animation feature in One UI 3.1. Specifically, it was the “Reduce animations” option in the Advanced Features section of Samsung’s One UI, an option that was there a few releases ago and has only now been removed.
For those who are not familiar with the option, just understand that it was a simple switch in an easily accessible area that mitigated the excessive animations of One UI. I loved it because it was as if Samsung realized how exaggerated was the scaling of the animation in its software and made it very easy to go back.
Many were quick to point out in that article that there are alternative options for this, including an “Remove animations” key in Accessibility, as well as window scale adjustments that can be made in the developer’s options. I’ve been aware of both for years, but the reason for the complaint was that Samsung withdrew a simple solution while going crazy with the transitions in One UI 3.1, particularly in the notifications tab, where it looks like it takes 5 seconds for a slide down to finish and show pending notifications.
So, because I want you all to be able to shorten the transition and animation times, we must ensure that everyone knows about the changes in the scaling of the animation. Seriously, your Samsung Galaxy phone will be instantly faster in almost everything you do after adjusting this setting. And as the Galaxy S21, as well as the Galaxy S20, Galaxy Note 20 and Galaxy Z Fold 2, now run One UI 3.1, it affects you a lot.
Speed up your Galaxy S21, S20, Note 20
- Go to Settings> About phone> Software information
- Find the build number and tap it several times until it says “Developer mode has been activated” at the bottom of the screen. You should see a countdown when this happens.
- Now, back up two screens in Settings and you will see “Developer options” as a new option under “About phone”.
- Touch Developer Options and scroll down until you find the options labeled: window animation scale, transition animation scale and animator duration scale.
- They should all be on a 1x animation scale, so you want to zoom out by touching each one and choosing a new scale. For me, I change all three to 0.5x.
- You could switch to “Animation off”, but I always feel that your eyes need some animation or it can be a little shocking to browse a device. If there is no animation, things happen almost very quickly.
- And that’s it!
Completing this small set of instructions will really make your phone look faster when you open a folder, exit an application and, yes, slide down in the notification area. The most important setting is the “Animator duration scale”, where if you set it to 2x or more, you will notice how things are going slowly. Then again, decrease it to 0.5x or less and everything will open and close without waiting.