How to turn off that annoying gimmick effect in windows 11 that happens when you turn monitors on or off?

Hello , Sebastian Alvarez

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A.

Thank you so much for describing the issue in such a detailed and clear manner. I completely understand your frustration—when a seemingly pointless visual effect repeatedly disrupts your workflow, it can truly drive anyone crazy. Your analysis of the problem—from UI inconsistencies to a precise description of the animation behavior—shows that you are a highly detail-oriented user, and your feedback is extremely valuable.

Before offering a solution, please allow me to explain the functional purpose behind this visual effect (even though its appearance may not be ideal). It’s not just a flashy gimmick—rather, it’s a form of visual feedback provided by the system while it performs complex operations in the background.

When you connect/disconnect a monitor or change the display mode (e.g., from “PC screen only” to “Extend”), Windows has to recalculate the entire desktop environment. This includes:

• The position and size of all open windows
• The layout of desktop icons
• Which screen should display the taskbar
• The definition of the primary vs. secondary display

This “zoom” animation is actually the Desktop Window Manager (DWM) signaling: “I’ve received a display configuration change and am re-compositing the entire desktop—please wait.” It provides a visual transition to avoid the jarring experience of windows and icons instantly jumping to new positions.

On the devices I’ve tested, simply turning off the monitor (allowing it to go to sleep) does not trigger this effect, but unplugging the cable or changing display modes in Settings does—because Windows doesn’t care about the monitor’s power state. What it monitors is whether a valid display signal (EDID information) is being received from the GPU port. When a display is fully powered on, Windows treats it as a newly “inserted” device, which triggers desktop recomposition.

Your previous attempt—disabling “animation effects” in Settings—didn’t help because that toggle acts as a “master switch” and disables all UI animations, including ones you may still want, like smooth scrolling.

There is indeed a more precise method. Instead of hunting for a specific registry key (because to my knowledge, there isn’t a simple one that targets this effect alone), we can disable a particular group of animations while keeping others enabled.

Please try the following steps—this should be the “golden solution” you’re looking for:

1. Press Win + R to open the Run dialog.
2. Type SystemPropertiesPerformance.exe and press Enter. This will open the Performance Options window directly.
3. In the list of visual effects, locate and uncheck the following option:
   • Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing
   1. Click Apply, then OK.

This “Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing” option actually controls more than just window min/max animations. It also governs other transitions handled by the window manager—including the desktop zoom effect you dislike.

The best part is that unchecking this option won’t affect smooth scrolling in browsers or the system. You’ll get the best of both worlds: no more zoom effect when switching displays, and smooth scrolling remains intact.

As for the mixture of old and new right-click menus, Microsoft is gradually replacing legacy components, but it’s a long transition. In certain contexts or file types, the system still falls back to the classic menu for compatibility reasons. If you’re seeing both on the same content, that could indicate an exception or an error that prevents the new UI from rendering properly. We’d need to clarify your exact scenario to investigate further.

Looking forward to your response!

Best wishes

Ian | Microsoft Q&A Support Specialist

The proper answer for this is NOT to disable all animations, but to simply disable the annoying and unprofessional "reduce, augment" animation when screens are added or removed, which not only seriously affects people with epilepsy (and similar situations), but in a professional presentation enviroment, makes things look amateurish and careless.
This Registry key seems to do the trick (please DON'T just run scripts without fully understanding them) - run this or add manually as admin.
reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Dwm" /v ForceDisableModeChangeAnimation /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f.
Once you enable this setting in the Registry, you need to either restart the computer (recommended) or kill the EXPLORER.EXE and DWM.EXE processes (if restart is not viable).
Hope this helps anyone extremely upset with this absurd visual disruption.