Apple quietly deleted some of your Mac’s hidden settings, no announcement, no release notes. The commands are still all over the internet; they just silently do nothing now.
So I tested basically every hidden macOS setting I could find, caught the dead ones, found the ones that still work, and ended up uninstalling an app I’d used every single day for two years, because two lines of text replaced it.
FREE STUFF
Every documented hidden setting, with demos: https://macos-defaults.com
CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro
0:36 The website
1:34 The app I uninstalled was built into macOS
3:00 The hidden third animation
4:34 Finder tricks + the Terminal-only feature
6:04 Off the map — and Apple deleting settings
8:31 The survivors
10:32 Digging through Apple’s code
12:40 The best hidden setting on macOS
13:40 After the restart + the uninstall
No sponsors. Nothing in this video is paid for.
You found it. THE COMMANDS THAT SURVIVED (macOS 26 Tahoe, tested on camera)
Drag any window from anywhere (hold Ctrl+Cmd — the find of the video): defaults write -g NSWindowShouldDragOnGesture -bool true
The instant dock (this is what the app was doing all along): defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 0 defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -float 0 killall Dock
Instant space switching when you drag a window to the screen edge: defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-edge-delay -float 0 killall Dock
Windows snap instead of glide (relaunch apps to see it): defaults write -g NSAutomaticWindowAnimationsEnabled -bool false defaults write -g NSWindowResizeTime -float 0.001
Key repeat faster than System Settings allows (log out and back in): defaults write -g KeyRepeat -int 1 defaults write -g InitialKeyRepeat -int 10
The hidden third minimize animation: defaults write com.apple.dock mineffect -string "suck" killall Dock
The Steve Jobs slow-motion easter egg (then Shift+click minimize): defaults write com.apple.dock slow-motion-allowed -bool true killall Dock
Undo any of these: defaults delete com.apple.dock <setting-name> && killall Dock
These change how your Mac behaves. Don't paste anything into a terminal you don't understand and everything here is reversible with defaults delete.