Applications menu, how to speed it up in Ubuntu 18.04 / 18.10

In the next article we are going to take a look at how we can speed up the Ubuntu 18.04 or 18.10 applications menu. As all Ubuntu users know, Ubuntu's GNOME applications menu causes application icons to be displayed from the bottom corner of the screen to the center of the screen through an animation. Although this looks good and looks very cool, it may get a bit slow and the PC performance is not as good as it should be.

For this reason, we are going to see a couple of possibilities to be able to stop this animation. With this we are going to get the icons to be displayed immediately. With this, it is faster to launch the applications from the Applications menu of our Ubuntu. This is always appreciated when your computer has slightly old hardware.

Speed ​​up the Applications menu by turning off icon animation

To write this article, I have verified that these two options work on both Ubuntu 18.04 and Ubuntu 18.10. I haven't been able to test it on other versions, but I imagine both options should work.

For carry out animation deactivation, we will be able to use either of the two options that we will see below:

1st Option. From the command line.

Step 1: → Open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T).

Step 2: → In this step, you just have to copy and paste the following command in terminal that you just opened. Then press Enter:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface enable-animations false

The terminal will not return anything, but this is all you will have to do.

Now you can check that when you access the menu Applications, the icons will not be displayed using animations. Instead you will see all application icons appear at once, no effects.

As I said, the previous command will deactivate the animation of the icons of our operating system. If when you try it, it does not convince you how it looks and you want to have the effects back, copy and paste the following command in the terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T):

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface enable-animations true

2nd Option. Via graphical interface.

Step 1: → To deactivate the animation of the icons, first we will install dconf-editor to modify the settings that you offer us. It will provide us with the backend access to Gsettings. dconf is a configuration and settings management system for our Ubuntu system. It was introduced in GNOME 3, along with GSettings, as a replacement for GConf.

To install it on your Ubuntu system, open a terminal (Ctrl + Atl + T). In it you just have to write the following command to launch the installation:

sudo apt install dconf-editor

Even if you prefer not to use the terminal for installation, and you like more to install software through a graphical interface, you can search for "dconf" in the Ubuntu software option. There you will be able to install the same program as using the terminal.

Step 2: → Once the installation is finished, you can start dconf-editor from the Activities menu.

Step 3: → Once the program is launched, navigate to / org / gnome / desktop / interface /. There you will find the option "Enable Animations”Activated. Turn OFF to disable icon animations. If you want to have the animations back, you just have to change the option to ON again.

Step 4: → Close dconf-editor. That is all you have to do to disable the animation of the Applications menu icons from the graphical environment.

Now you can check that animations are disabled when you access the Applications menu. You should no longer see the icon animation. Instead, you will see all the application icons appear at once, with no effects.

As you will be able to verify, with both methods you will get the same result. You are going to make the icons appear faster on your screen. Although I have to admit that in Ubuntu 18.04 if I have noticed a change, in version 18.10, the change has not been so evident to me.