Slow down window animations in Windows 8/7/Vista with the Shift key

In Windows Vista, Microsoft introduced the DWM (Desktop Window Manager) which implements fancy animation effects, transparency and Aero skins for window frames. Ever since Vista, it allows you to slow down window animations by pressing the Shift key (the animation you see when any dialog or window appears on screen, or when minimizing, or closing a window). This is a hidden feature that has to be enabled with a registry tweak. Read the rest of this article to learn how to enable it.

Open Registry Editor (you can press Win+R and type regedit.exe in the "Run..." dialog) and navigate to the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM

Bonus tip: How to jump to the desired registry key with one click

You should create here a new DWORD value AnimationsShiftKey. Set it to 1.

Well, you are almost done. Now log off and log in back into your Windows user account to see the change.

Ttry holding down the Shift key on the keyboard and try to minimize any window by pressing the Minimize button in the title bar.

How to reset animations to their defaults

Just remove AnimationsShiftKey mentioned above and log off from Windows. That's it.

If you don't like to use Registry Editor, try out my all-in-one application Winaero Tweaker software. It supports the AnimationsShiftKey feature in Appearance -> Slow Down Animations:
Use the appropriate checkbox to enable/disable animations slowdown.