Add option to disable animations

Blankeos

Based on the known issue with animations blocking inputs, requesting for a way to also just completely disable animations.

Can refer to Sigma OS. The expected result is a snappier feel like closing/opening the side panels in VSCode or NeoVim. Or opening the command palette without a fade-in animation so I can type immediately.

There are users that prefer animations, but I think devs also use this browser and expect the same snappy feedback when pressing things like how easy it is to close sidepanels in VSCode or Neovim, open terminals, etc.

kramo

Why should this be app-specific instead of following the system-wide “Reduce Motion” option?

As for individual animations, if any of them are particularly annoying, we can try and tackle them by eg. buffering input. But altogether, I think the system-wide setting should suffice.

Blankeos

kramo Thanks, I didn't know the System-Wide "Reduced Motion" is meant to affect Orion's animations. But actually even after I tried enabling that, it doesn't seem to do anything for Orion. I still see animations for:

Collapsing tabs
Open/Collapse sidebar for vertical tabs.

Am I missing anything? I have also tried ⌘Q to quit Orion and open it again, but I still see the animations. Also tried restarting my Mac with reduced motion on.

But to add to @raphty's reply, I agree with a way to decouple it. I personally like Mac's animations (Window switching, etc), but would like the Orion itself to have no animations.

A sample of very snappy controls currently in the app is when I switch between: Vertical Tabs (^⌘2), Bookmarks (^⌘3), Bookmarks (^⌘4).

raphty

I have reduced motion active on my mac.... and I don't see any animations in orion... am I missing something? should I turn the motion on again?

TBH I'm fine, but I now am thinking I might want to try orions animations even with mac reduced motion active... so maybe that is a reason to decouple that?

kramo

Blankeos

I still see animations

Then that is likely a bug, we should look into that.

As for providing a separate option, I’m still skeptical that this is the right approach. If certain animations do feel sluggish and interrupt lots of people, we should rework or remove them in general.

And I’m not sure adding transitions back when reduce motion is enabled is easily possible, or even a good idea given this is primarily an accessibility feature.

I think we can look into changing the defaults to make the default experience better for all users to the extent we can with the available components. Could you list some animations that you feel interrupt your workflow?

Blankeos

kramo Thanks! The two animations that are kind of feel sluggish to me are:

Opening/Closing Sidebar (^⌘S)
Focus Mode (⌘ Shift F)