One of the things that makes iOS special is its SpringBoard animations. The animations help orient the user around iOS using 3D space.
But not everyone is a fan of iOS’ animations — some for purely aesthetic reasons and others for health reasons. With this in mind, Apple has provided a way to reduce the animations using the Reduce Motion switch found in the Accessibility settings. Even with that option available, some wish to take the reduction of animations even further and disable them altogether.
Up until now, many of the available options for disabling animations relied on jailbreaking. But a new iOS glitch found by a redditor makes it possible to completely get rid of SpringBoard animations until you reboot your iPhone. Watch our step-by-step video walkthrough inside to see how.
How to do disable animations without jailbreaking
Step 1: Open Settings → General → Accessibility → Assistive Touch and enable the Assistive Touch switch.
Step 2: Go to the Home screen and drag the Assistive Touch nub to the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.
Step 3: Invoke Spotlight search by swiping down on the Home screen. When the Assistive Touch nub rests above the keyboard, tap the screen to dismiss Spotlight. If you time Spotlight to dismiss as soon as the nub goes above the keyboard, you’ll notice Spotlight’s interface speed up, indicating that the glitch is now active.
Step 4: Try launching any app to see if the animations are gone. If not, repeat Step 3 until it works. Some suggest that you should try ~20 times, but I was able to make it work almost immediately.
Step 5: Disable the Assistive Touch switch enabled in Step 1.
Video walkthrough
The animations will be disabled until you reboot your iPhone. In the video above, I used an iPhone 6s running iOS 9.3b6. I’ve also tested it on an iPhone 6 Plus running iOS 9.0.2, an iPhone 5s running iOS 9.2, and an iPad Pro running iOS 9.3b6.
Be sure to watch our video walkthrough above for a full step-by-step tutorial on disabling SpringBoard animations without jailbreaking.
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Wow, it really works. I really like the feel of the phone without the time wasting animations. I’m on iOS 9.3b6.
Love this!
This took me about 15-20 tries to do but it works just as described. Great directions. Thank you Thank you Thank you.
Also, (since there is no edit option) I am on iPhone 6 with 9.2.1
Great tip! Although, has anyone else found that when locking your device after this glitch is enabled, the lock screen flickers on the screen momentarily?
Interesting, yes I did notice that just now.
My guess is that although the phone locks instantly with no animation, the screen still needs time to fade to black?
Definitely something to do with the fade out animation. Oh well, I guess I can live with it :)
Definitely worth it
Yes. It is very subtle but it is noticeable, the lock screen flickers.
The number one annoyance I have with iOS is the crazy long animations. This is genuinely amazing. I hope they enable this as a real feature in the accessibility settings some day – until then, I’ll keep using this technique to remove them :D.
I recently turned on “Reduce Motion” in accessibility. it really reduced the animations and made interactions faster. Not as fast as this, perhaps, but super easy to enable unlike this method.
Wait, Ulysses is coming to the iPhone?
Yeppers.
Hopefully this is not asking too much but… do you know if it will be a separate app or will it be a universal app?
Good question; I _think_ it should be a Uni.
https://vimeo.com/153032239
That grass does NOT look healthy!
Hahaha, yeah. It’s low on my priority list.
It’s barely March, what do you expect?
Apple uses the animations to hide the fact that iOS devices are already instantaneous. They need the delay to make you want to upgrade to a new device with the assumption your new device will be faster. But its all just an illusion.
Dam daniel back at it again with the Brand new phone haxs
Very cool. It took me about 10 tries, but I finally got it. I’d love it if Apple gave us an accessibility option to totally remove launch animations. Maybe if we all submit feature requests.
http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html
I didn’t think it worked for the 6 Plus but I finally got it to. I’m on iOS 9.3 beta 6.
It stopped working overnight without a reboot for me.
thank you so much it’s really works !!! im in shock
when ulysses is coming to iphones? :)
Awesome I hate the animations.
If you enable Settings / General / Accessibility / Reduce Motion, you will have reduced animations, and it will remain after rebooting.
Yep, this was demonstrated in the video.
As mentioned on the video, reduce motion does not reduce the animation lag. That is, the lag is the same (I think 2 seconds) whether the setting is turned on or not (just different animation).
Damn it. I have been using this glitch since iOS 9 came out. Now Apple is probably going to fix it… :(
It works!
Please apple give us the option to do this without glitches, i would appreciate it just like all of us here
Just activated this. Thanks! Everything does feel much snappier.
I remember reading about this years ago. Android was designed with speed in mind, so animations were deemed as unnecessary waste of CPU cycles. However, the reality is that animations are designed to hide the lag behind actual app loading, which Apple did use in iPhone. That is why Android always felt laggy – there was simply no feedback to the use that something is happening. Unfortunately there was some moment in history where apps started loading instantly and animations nowadays are mostly redundant. Love this hack, Apple should make this a part of Reduced Motion setting
WOW! That really works! I have a 6 Plus running 9.3b6 and had to try 10-15 times, but it works. I just wish it could be a native feature, like, when you turn on reduce motion this should be the result. Just wish.
I just tried this but i don’t know if it’s just me but there’s a glitch when I’m trying to move apps from one folder to another. I just can’t. It won’t move to another folder. Not sure if others have this problem. I rebooted and staying with reduced motion off.
Animation gives the phone a sense of depth, and a sense of space. That said, it has become the measure of speed/quality of the OS, and its doing more harm than good. You have idiots on Macrumors that think Apple has crippled their iPhone 6 and 6 Plus with iOS 9 because the animations aren’t as smooth as on the iPhone 6s.
It really works! Great tip, thank you :)
Thanks for the tip! Simply brilliant, this “Easter egg” :-D
IOS9.3b6
geekbench3 results dropped by more than 100points singlecore and 120points multicore perfornance
iphone6 iOS 9.2.1
Can confirm that this glitch works on iOS 9.3 beta 6 on iPhone 6
sweet – for a few minutes, I thought I was being played… took me about 35-40 tries, I gave up after a while, and went to turn assistive touch back off, and got lucky! works with 9.2.1
not working for ios 9.3 beta :(
Worked very well and fast on my 2 iPhones 6.
They look much better. Thanks for the tip.
I tried many times on my iPod… My fingers hurts. That’s all !
when activated.. about 15-20% faster battery drain..
happy to see you Jeff in 9to5 mac
couldnt you just turn it off?
through motion reduction
Doesn’t work. I’ve tried 4-5 times. No difference.
I hope you mean 40-50
It’s practically impossible to get it on the first 5 tries
Super
Still works with 9.3
cant confirm more battery drain, i just love this feature to disable timeconsuming animations
If I upgrade to ios 9.3, this fix will disappear?
not working ios 9.3.2 beta 2
Doesn’t work anymore on 9.3.2 beta 2.
what about ios 6??
Worked nicely for me until Beta 4 (13F68). Now I can’t get it to work anymore.
Beware the IOS 9.3.2 update broke this :(
Hey there
I was activating it
But when i update the software to 9.3.2 it dosnt work
I have repeated the operation and norhing happened ..
Ant help ?
Thanks
Using this method, it’s possible to perform a glitch similar to the ios 9.2.1 glitch with temporarily hiding apps. The way to perform my glitch requires this glitch however so you need to be in ios9.3-9.3.1 not 9.3.2 because they fixed the springboard animation glitch.
How to perform: Get a folder in a folder. The folder in the folder needs to have at least 2 apps. Grab and app until it wiggles, then when it goes out of the first folder (folder in the other folder) it will be in the other folder, press home immediatly and it will dissapear until a restart. You can remove all apps by creating an empty folder. The glitch doesn’t work when there are no other items in the folder and it collapses leaving you with your one app or empty folder
Guess they fixed it in iOS 10 =(
Didn’t notice the most recent comments were not at the top but I guess they fixed it earlier =/
How to enable them again ????????