It’s finally over: I know a lot of you have been looking for ways to disable the “swoosh” animation when changing Spaces, and it’s now possible without a lot of mucking about (and you don’t even need Hyperspaces to do it!).

  1. Open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app
  2. Copy and paste the following into the terminal window and then press enter:
    defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-swoosh-animation-off -bool YES && killall Dock

There’s no step three. Your Dock will restart, and any time you change spaces — whether this be from within Hyperspaces or from the System — Spaces will no longer animate when transitioning to the new space. I’ve tested this under Mac OS X 10.6.5, but it reportedly works under 10.6.4 as well.

If you’d like to re-​enable the “swooshing” effect:

  1. Open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app
  2. Copy and paste the following into the terminal window and then press enter:
    defaults delete com.apple.dock workspaces-swoosh-animation-off && killall Dock

Thanks go to Will Haslett for letting me know about this hidden preference.