Script to reduce motion and transparency on macOS devices

macOS devices offer a variety of accessibility options to enhance user experience for users. The Display section of the Accessibility pane allows users to modify display settings to suit their needs, including options to reduce motion and transparency. Enabling these settings may be beneficial for users who are sensitive to visual effects and hence require the device’s display settings to be customized.

This document guides you on how to enable the Reduce motion and Reduce transparency options on your macOS devices with the help of a script. You can execute this script remotely with the help of Hexnode’s Execute Custom Script action.

Scripting language – Bash

File extension – .sh

Enable the options Reduce motion and Reduce transparency

Replace Username with the actual username of the user whose device settings need to be changed.

Reduce motion

Enabling the Reduce motion option on a macOS device alters the interface animations to make them simpler and more visually comfortable. Here’s an explanation of how it works:

1. Normal transition:
   When you switch between two full-screen apps, there is usually a transition animation. This visual effect might or might not cause dizziness or discomfort for some users.
2. Reduce motion enabled:
   Instead of the animation, the transition between apps becomes a simple cross-fade, where one app gradually fades out as the other fades in. This gentler cross-fade effect is less likely to cause discomfort because it avoids the rapid movement typical of animations.

Reduce transparency

Enabling the Reduce transparency option on macOS changes the appearance of semi-transparent elements in the user interface to solid ones. Here’s an explanation of how it works:

1. Normal interface:
   By default, macOS includes semi-transparent elements in various parts of the interface, such as the dock, menu bar, and sidebars of apps. These semi-transparent elements allow some of the background to be shown through.
2. Reduce transparency enabled:
   When you turn on Reduce transparency option, the semi-transparent elements become solid. This means they no longer show any background through them.

What happens at the device end?

Once the script is executed, the Reduce motion and Reduce transparency options will be enabled. You can find these settings under System Preferences/System Settings > Accessibility > Display.