Forum Discussion

yanismnsr's avatar
yanismnsr
Copper Contributor
Sep 02, 2021

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.

  • 64blit's avatar
    64blit
    Copper Contributor

    yanismnsr 

    I solved this by making my background a solid color rather than the default image. Hope that helps.

    • artistro08's avatar
      artistro08
      Copper Contributor

      I fixed mine with turning off the dynamic colors. Just pick a color under personalization preferences and you should be good. 

      • Tom Stone's avatar
        Tom Stone
        Copper Contributor
        Thank you, I was having the same issue and this helped!
    • softbaked_497's avatar
      softbaked_497
      Copper Contributor
      This noticeably improved issue for me.
      2023-01 and still nothing addressing this issue from MSFT
      (RTX A4500)
  • shivam685's avatar
    shivam685
    Copper Contributor

    yanismnsr artistro08 

    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 :">

     

     

    • multimatum's avatar
      multimatum
      Copper Contributor

      I had the same problem on Windows 11, and I realized that the reason was that I had different Bing wallpapers on different desktops. I fixed this problem by going into Settings >> Personalization >> Background >> Recent images >> right-click on one of the images >> Click "Set for all desktops". After that, the desktop switching was finally back to normal.

      • thamudi's avatar
        thamudi
        Copper Contributor
        This seems like a solution for now.
    • cheema33's avatar
      cheema33
      Copper Contributor

      If you change your touchpad settings so that four-finger swipe performs the Ctrl+Win+Right/Left Arrow key, you lose an important function. One of my virtual desktops is a remote desktop session in full screen mode. I can switch in and out of it with touchpad gestures. I cannot with keyboard shortcuts. Keyboard shortcuts are sent to the remote computer.

      The other suggestions of setting a single color background mostly solved the problem for me.

      And turning off "Snap Windows", like another user suggested, did not provide any additional benefit, so I turned it back on.  I like black backgrounds anyway (fewer distractions), so it is a win-win.

      Maybe in a few more years Microsoft will fix this problem.  I have a Mac also, and it is flawless with these sort of things.

      • bennie1180's avatar
        bennie1180
        Copper Contributor
        I have to admit that the engine used for virtual desktops in Windows 11 is simply bad, I have been using both Windows and Macbook for years, and in a Macbook with basic hardware, everything works smoothly without any problem, while in Windows with a powerful processor and graphics accelerator for games, moving windows looks like I have a Pentium 4..., Time to wake up, even the free Linux does it without any problem.
  • MickieMo's avatar
    MickieMo
    Copper Contributor
    Same thing here with the following specs:

    AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core Processor
    32.0 GB of RAM
    NVidia RTX 3070 GPU

  • 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.
  • Devopsterus's avatar
    Devopsterus
    Copper Contributor

    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.

     

     

    • danmul's avatar
      danmul
      Copper Contributor

      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.

  • esowdenguzman's avatar
    esowdenguzman
    Copper Contributor

    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"

     

    • popular_capybara's avatar
      popular_capybara
      Copper Contributor

      I 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 

  • yanismnsr's avatar
    yanismnsr
    Copper Contributor
    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
  • danmul's avatar
    danmul
    Copper Contributor

    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.

    • artistro08's avatar
      artistro08
      Copper Contributor

      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

  • richardrama's avatar
    richardrama
    Copper Contributor

    Hi there,

    Still no solution to this problem? i´ve been working with w11 with a black color **bleep** a wallpaper since the begining.

    Cheers

    • dmcoxe's avatar
      dmcoxe
      Copper Contributor

      For 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 

  • 0xba7's avatar
    0xba7
    Copper Contributor

    yanismnsr 

     

    So, it is over a year later and they still can't fix this?!?

     

    If I had a script loading the image from disk, it would be faster than this. I had to switch to a solid background to make it tolerable. 

Resources