Skip to main content

Disable UI animations: IDE Registry keys and OS reduce-motion settings

Jerome Guan
Updated

Question

How to turn off popup and other UI animations in IntelliJ IDEA?

Answer

IntelliJ IDEA has no single setting that turns off all animations. Individual animations are controlled by Registry keys inside the IDE. Animations drawn by the operating system are controlled by the OS accessibility settings.

Animations controlled inside the IDE

Open Find Action and run Registry…. The values below are the defaults in IntelliJ IDEA 2026.2.1.

Key Default Controls
ide.animation.showing.duration 130 Duration of showing a component on mouse entered or on focus gained
ide.animation.hiding.duration 150 Duration of hiding a component on mouse exited or on focus lost
ide.tooltip.animationCycle 150 Duration in milliseconds for one animation cycle of tooltip animations
ide.experimental.ui.animations true Animate resizing of editor splits
editor.skeleton.animation.enabled true Editor skeleton animation shown while a file loads
editor.smooth.caret.duration 120 Duration of caret blinking animation
ui.simplified false Disables notification shadows, all gradients, and scrollbar animation

Each duration key takes a value in milliseconds, and a lower value shortens the animation.

Set ide.experimental.ui.animations and editor.skeleton.animation.enabled to false. Set ui.simplified to true.

Three further keys already default to off and need no change: ide.animate.toolwindows, ide.editor.tab.selection.animation, and ide.intellij.laf.enable.animation.

A single option that disables every animation does not exist. Disable popover (autocomplete) animation tracks that request.

macOS

The blurry, bouncing popup animation reported on macOS 26 came from the JetBrains Runtime rather than from an IDE setting. It is fixed in 2025.3 and later, per macOS: Right-click context menu shows blurry animation when opening. Update the IDE before changing any system setting.

To reduce animations across macOS:

  1. Open System Settings.
  2. Go to Accessibility.
  3. Under Motion, select Reduce motion.

Windows

  1. Press Win+I to open Settings.
  2. Go to Accessibility.
  3. Click Visual effects.
  4. Turn Animation effects off.

Linux

The setting depends on the desktop environment. Both options below apply to the whole desktop session, not to IntelliJ IDEA alone.

GNOME (Ubuntu, Fedora Workstation, and similar)

Run:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface enable-animations false

The same change in the user interface:

  1. Open Settings.
  2. Go to Accessibility.
  3. Find the animation toggle in the Seeing section. The toggle is named either Reduce Animation or Enable Animations. Turn Reduce Animation on, or turn Enable Animations off.

KDE Plasma (Kubuntu, Fedora KDE, and similar)

  1. Open System Settings.
  2. In the search box, type animation speed.
  3. Move the Animation speed slider to Instant.
  4. Click Apply. This turns animations off and sets the reduced-motion flag that applications read.

To remove individual effects:

  1. In System Settings, open Workspace Behavior, then Desktop Effects.
  2. Disable the animation effects that should not run, for example window open and close, or fade and scale.
  3. Apply the changes.

Comments

0 comments

Please sign in to leave a comment.