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Door staff@engadget.com (Adnan Ahmed) - 28 Sep 2026
With how powerful the chips inside our smartphones have gotten, lags and stutters have become something you generally shouldn't experience anymore. Staying up-to-date with the latest Android version and making sure all your apps are updated can help keep things running smoothly. Clearing cache may help with performance, but only in situations where an app's files have become corrupted or bloated. There is, however, a neat trick buried inside Android's settings app that can make your phone feel noticeably snappier.
All Android phones, regardless of brand or price, let you tweak the speed of system animations. This option has actually been around at least since Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and is one of the first things I change whenever I set up a new Android phone. You'll find this inside Android's developer options menu, which is hidden by default.
Navigate to Settings > About, and look for the "Build Number" option. Depending on your phone's model, it may sometimes be located under a submenu like "Software Version." Tap the label seven times, and you should see a toast message saying "You are now a developer!" Head back to the main settings page. You may find the Developer Options menu right there, but if not, navigate to System, and you should now see it.
You'll find a seemingly endless list of options inside. It's strongly recommended you do not change any options here unless you know exactly what they do. What we're looking for are the animation scale settings under the Drawing section. Set the Window animation scale, Transition animation scale and Animator duration scale values to 0.5x. This will make most animations on your Android phone play twice as fast.
All Android phones, regardless of brand or price, let you tweak the speed of system animations. This option has actually been around at least since Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and is one of the first things I change whenever I set up a new Android phone. You'll find this inside Android's developer options menu, which is hidden by default.
Navigate to Settings > About, and look for the "Build Number" option. Depending on your phone's model, it may sometimes be located under a submenu like "Software Version." Tap the label seven times, and you should see a toast message saying "You are now a developer!" Head back to the main settings page. You may find the Developer Options menu right there, but if not, navigate to System, and you should now see it.
You'll find a seemingly endless list of options inside. It's strongly recommended you do not change any options here unless you know exactly what they do. What we're looking for are the animation scale settings under the Drawing section. Set the Window animation scale, Transition animation scale and Animator duration scale values to 0.5x. This will make most animations on your Android phone play twice as fast.