Reduce Motion in iOS 7.0.3
iOS 7 was criticized by early adopters for the slowness and amount of animations and transitions throughout the OS. A subset of users asked Apple to reduce the motion of the OS as it was causing motion sickness for them; a setting that the company had included in the Settings app wasn’t enough, as it disabled the parallax effect of iOS, but not the new animations.
Apple has listened, and in iOS 7.0.3 the Reduce Motion setting (available in General > Accessibility) now truly reduces animations: switching to apps and back to Home screen, unlocking the device, and moving between folders is now a cross-fade that is much faster than Apple’s animations with Reduce Motion turned off.
In my iPhone 5s first impressions post, I wrote:
It still feels like I’m often waiting for the phone, though sometimes this is for animations or the network.
I have not timed it, but subjectively the cross-fade feels much faster to me than the animation. It makes my phone so much more pleasant to use that I think Apple should make this the default.
2 Comments RSS · Twitter
One reason it feels much faster (even though it's only slightly faster) is that you are seeing the icons in their final positions immediately, rather than having to wait for them to animate into place. So even if you can't tap immediately, you can start to target your finger while the animation completes.
It feels much more "sophisticated" (for want of a better word) to me. The swooping and swirling just doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the system.
