Disable Animations in the Taskbar in Windows 10

How to Enable or Disable Animations in the Taskbar in Windows 10

By default, Windows 10 has many effects enabled for eye candy. You can see animations on the Start screen, Taskbar, opening and closing apps, drop shadow effects, combo boxes sliding open and so on, to make the user interface appear more fluid. Windows 10 uses a number of individual animations for the taskbar.

The taskbar animation effects include:

• Slide effect when dragging an icon on the taskbar.
• Fade and slide effect for taskbar thumbnail previews
• Action progress bar below the app icon on the taskbar that appears when you are downloading or copying files.

You might want to disable these animation effects. Disabling them will slightly improve the responsiveness of the OS.

You can use the GUI to disable taskbar animations. Alternatively, you can apply a Registry tweak. Here is how.

To Disable Animations in the Taskbar in Windows 10,

1. Press Win + R shortcut keys together on your keyboard. The Run dialog will appear on the screen.
   Tip: See the ultimate list of all Windows keyboard shortcuts with Win keys.
2. Type the following in the Run box: SystemPropertiesAdvanced
3. Press Enter. This will open the Advanced System Properties window directly.
4. Click the Settings button under the Performance section. The Performance Options dialog will open.
5. Uncheck (disable)  the option Animations in the taskbar. It is (checked) enabled by default.

You are done. The change affects the current user account only.

Alternatively, you can apply a Registry tweak.

Disable Taskbar Animations in Registry

1. Open the Registry Editor app.
2. Go to the following Registry key. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
   See how to go to a Registry key with one click.
3. On the right, modify or create a new 32-Bit DWORD value TaskbarAnimations. Note: Even if you are running 64-bit Windows you must still create a 32-bit DWORD value.
4. Set its value to 0 to disable animations.
5. A value data of 1 will enable animations.
6. To make the changes done by the Registry tweak take effect, you need to sign out and sign in to your user account. Alternatively, you can restart the Explorer shell.

To save your time, you can download the following ready-to-use Registry files:

Download Registry Files

The undo tweak is included.

That's it

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