Forum Discussion
Slow virtual desktop switching on windows 11
Hi,
I recently joined the windows insider program and installed Windows 11. But since then, I am facing a significantly slow virtual desktop switching, compared to windows 10 (4 fingers slide gesture on trackpad).
I am on the beta channel, but I have been facing this problem since the very first release of windows 11, when I was on the dev channel.
These are my hardware specs :
Is there any solution to speed this up ?
Thanks in advance.
33 Replies
I was still experiencing this in Nov 2024, and a temp fix that has worked for me is disabling FancyZones in PowerToys.
2025 here, give it up for 2025 lol
Changing the desktop to a solid color is what worked for me. wth right? lol. Disabling Fancy Zones (Powertoys) or system animations didn't seem to make a difference on my system.
Pro tip though: hit win+r and paste this in to quickly pull up the animation settings (since win11 changes the menus around all the time.)
%windir%\system32\SystemPropertiesPerformance.exe
for anyone still struggling with this, I found a solution (thanks to ChatGPT woohoo) which isn't as heavy-handed as some of the others here. you can do: right click start menu > system > advanced system settings > performance settings > visual effects > choose "custom" > disable "animate controls and elements inside Windows"
This fixed the issue I was having with Ctrl-Windows-Arrow key to switch between desktops, it was taking almost 10 seconds to switch, now it's instant. Thanks for the solution! Cheers!
Broo, I can't thank you enough for this. You are a literal life saver due.
Been facing this issue for years now. Always thought my laptop is **bleep**. Even after switching 3 laptops in the past few years. I totally stopped using desktops especially due the insane amounts of lag.
Thanks againI solved the issue by setting 'Adjust for best appearence'... figure out why... I tried everything else, solid background, disable animations, disable window snapping... but nothing seemed to fix the problem. Anyway thank you for putting me on the right track esowdenguzman
Hello Everyone. As of Nov 5 2022, there is no OFFICIAL solution to slow touchpad desktop switching. However, I do have a solution THAT WORKS.
1) Set accent colour to manual, as suggested by artistro08
2) Now, what i noticed is, the keyboard shortcut for switching desktops is SO FAST AND SEEMLESS. So I have configured my touchpad settings as below:
a) Search "Touchpad settings > Advanced Gestures > Configure four-finger gestures".
b) Find "Swipe Left" and from drop down menu, select " Custom Shortcut".
c) Click "Start Recording" and click Ctrl + Win + Right Arrow Key.
d) Click "Stop Recording".
e) Now try and SEE THE SPEED!!!
f) For , Swipe Right, again do a similar procedure, but click Ctrl + Win + Left Arrow key.
g) DONE !! Enjoy!!
. THIS WORKS !!!! Do share if it helps :">great tip, thank you
- @that works like charm.
Microsoft, please fix. no need to do such hacks. - worked amazingly well, thank you
Hi there,
Still no solution to this problem? i´ve been working with w11 with a black color **bleep** a wallpaper since the begining.
CheersFor what its worth I discovered that if I turned off the "Snap Windows" feature under "Multitasking" the lag time issue in switching between desktops went away without resorting to turning off my desktop slide show functionality that others said they had to do. I really like the "Snap Windows" functionality, but I can live without it if it means I can seamlessly move between desktops. richardrama
Can confirm that selecting a solid accent colour speeds up desktop switching.
Should we accept this as a fix though? I had similar settings on Windows 10 on a lesser machine and it worked seamlessly.danmul Yeah it's less than ideal, but the way that it's coded is the reason why. I'm sure they will fix it, but in the meantime, we got a temp fix
yanismnsr I have the same issue, (Threadripper 3960x, Radeon 6900 XT). When using Bing desktop to set background images, virtual desktop switching becomes nearly impossible.
Sometimes it will pop to another desktop and seems to get confused.
As others have said, setting to a solid background does solve the issue, I'd like to point out that even using the Background settings panel is painfully slow. E.g Selecting "Solid color" then picking a color, and seeing the change, took 36 seconds to accomplish. These actions should be just a couple of clicks.
Devopsterus There's definitely something wrong here, we shouldn't be forced to disable theming in order for us to get around our machines effectively.
Devopsterus wrote:Sometimes it will pop to another desktop and seems to get confused.
This occurs for me when I have automatic accents turned on.
Turning that off alone seems to do the job and is less impactful on theming, but that said, it's still not ideal.
- Yup, same here. Using as Blade 15 Advanced laptop i.e. i7, 32Gb RAM, Intel UHD Graphis + Nvidia RTX 3080 w/ 16GB (but its probably the former that is handling the desktop.
- Thanks for your answers. I noticed that by choosing a solid color or a "Slideshow" as a background it makes it less laggy, but still not as fluent as on windows 10
- This noticeably improved issue for me.
2023-01 and still nothing addressing this issue from MSFT
(RTX A4500) I fixed mine with turning off the dynamic colors. Just pick a color under personalization preferences and you should be good.
- This worked like a charm! Even with Bing background. Night and day. Thanks!!!!!!
