The transition from Windows 10 to Windows 11 was terrible, to say the least, and adjusting to the new OS still feels jarring. Fast-forward to 2026, and Microsoft has made major changes that have greatly improved Windows 11, but it still has issues and can feel slow.
In particular, the perceived sluggishness in Windows 11 feels more like a design flaw than a performance issue.
This momentary pause comes from Windows animations that add transitions between states. When you close windows or minimize them, that slight lag makes interactions feel slow, as if your system is throttling performance. Fortunately, you can disable these animations to get a more fluid, immediate feel in Windows 11, which makes the OS feel snappier overall.
Turn off animation effects
A one-toggle fix and a manual option if you want further control
When I’m at my most productive and juggling several tabs, even a slight animation delay can throw me off. Fortunately, Windows 11 gives you customization options to adjust animation effects, and there are multiple ways to disable or minimize them.
The easiest way is to open Settings > Accessibility > Visual Effects, then toggle off Animation effects.
However, if you want to keep most of these effects but disable the ones causing lag, you can turn off animation features individually. To do so, follow these steps:
- Press Windows + R and type sysdm.cpl to open System Properties.
- From there, navigate to Advanced > Performance > Settings.
- Under Visual Effects, you’ll see a variety of animation effects you can toggle manually, or select Adjust for best performance to tune them automatically.
However, if you’re willing to customize it to your own liking, leave these settings turned on because they add minimal lag but keep Windows 11 looking pretty:
- Smooth edges of screen fonts: Uses anti-aliasing to make text edges look pretty and less jagged and isn’t an animation.
- Show thumbnails instead of icons: Displays a thumbnail preview for supported images and not just the file-type icon.
- Show window contents while dragging: When moving a window, drag the actual content, not just an outline.
- Save taskbar thumbnail previews: Windows caches thumbnail previews for the taskbar to avoid regenerating the preview.
- Enable Peek: This Aero Peek behavior makes other windows transparent when you hover over a taskbar thumbnail so you can see what’s behind them.
Leave the rest disabled because they add to the delay.
Disable transparency effects
The blur costs more than it looks
Disabling animations in Windows 11 is half the picture. While they provide transitions, transparency effects add to the visual impression of latency because the transparency effect blends with the content background, and shifting windows means changing more visual information.
Personally, I’ve never really liked the transparency effect in Windows 11, and while it’s far more forgiving than Apple’s implementation of Liquid Glass with iOS 26 and macOS Tahoe, which is too strong an effect that’s too flashy (for me) and impacts readability, the same concept applies to Windows 11 but less intensely.
That is why I tend to disable the transparency effect in Windows 11, and it’s straightforward to do. You’ll find the Transparency effects toggle in the same section as animations under Settings > Accessibility > Visual Effects > Transparency effects.
On OLED panels, turning off transparency effects makes the OS (in Dark Mode) look much better because the dark looks clean and slick, and the OS doesn’t have to blend with the background.
Disabling these settings does far more than make Windows faster
Where the resource savings come from
Windows 11 being resource-intensive is no secret, and it is only recently that the OS has started to get better, particularly because of the RAMageddon and the fact that Microsoft is trying to sell Surface laptops with 8GB RAM in 2026.
Disabling animations and transparency effects also makes a noticeable difference because animations require rendering extra frames for each transition, and transparency elements like Mica rely on DWM composition to blend layers in real-time. Both of these features add performance overhead and strain resources on lower-end hardware.
Turning these effects off makes Windows 11 more responsive and faster, and improves performance on systems with little room for unused resources.
Worth doing, even on newer hardware
While these effects were meant to make Windows 11 more “modern,” they’re just one of many features that work counterintuitively for productivity. Beyond disabling animations and transparency effects, you can make other tweaks to make Windows 11 feel faster and more responsive, both in performance and visually.
Also, keep in mind that certain updates can turn these animation and transparency options back on, but you’ll notice the slowdown right away, and you can just disable them again.