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Disable "stretchy animation" scrolling behavior?
Mike - mSecure
Hi Graham,
Thank you for contacting us. We have not enabled any special animations for the native scrolling feature on Android, and to my knowledge, there is no way to disable it. It's simply a default scrolling API offered to 3rd party apps that make use of the "Fast Scrolling" feature. That feature shows the tab to the right of the screen when you start scrolling, then you can grab that tab and move it update and down to see where you're at in the list of records in relation to the sort method you have chosen. For example, if you sort by name, the letter of the alphabet will appear to the left of your finger to tell you where you're at in the list. As long as the "Fast Scroller" is used, that animation is present. At this time, we don't have any plans on removing the "Fast Scroll" feature.
@Mike, thanks for your reply. The "Fast Scrolling" feature you describe appears to be the scroll button/thumb that acts as a pop-out scrollbar. I wasn't talking about that, though it also invokes the same stretchy animation. I'm talking about just swiping up or down on the main item list, even just a little bit. I assume that both swiping and the Fast Scrolling feed events to the same underlying control, which is where the animation is implemented.
For what it's worth, I notice when scrolling up and down, if you scroll up so a few items disappear off the top, and then scroll down, those few items come back without animation, then animation starts happening for additional items pulled down. (Similar action at the bottom of the screen,) So this animation interacts with some kind of caching, either of item data, or rendered area.
I am somewhat skeptical that this stretchy animation is part of underlying Android, first because it doesn't occur in other applications that I have that have long scrolling lists: for example File Manager +, and just scrolling the options in the Android Settings feature, some of which have long lists that scroll just fine with no stretchy distraction.
And second, it doesn't get disabled by manipulating the various Android settings that disable animations: Accessibility Remove Animations, Developer options: Transition animation scale, Animator duration scale and Animator duration scale, all set to "Animation off".
Bottom line, I'm pretty sure that applications do not have to put up with this animation. If you are using a cross-platform framework to produce apps for both Android and IOS, that's where I'd look for this feature.
Mike - mSecure
Hi Graham,
While I'm not certain the animation can't be stopped, I am certain we have not specifically programmed that animation to happen. It's most definitely a default setting with the Android API we're using for either simply scrolling or in combination with the "Fast Scrolling" feature. I'm also nearly certain the animation is related to the "Fast Scrolling," so any other app you are testing must show the tab that comes out from the right side of the app showing you where you're at in the list in order to compare and contrast. If the app is not using "Fast Scrolling," as is the case with my Spark email client, then the comparison is Apples and Oranges.
The problem now is, to my knowledge, you are the only customer who has complained about this. Because of that, we don't want to remove something that seemingly everyone else is ok with. We may be able to make it a setting to turn on and off, but at this time, investing time into that possibility can't be high on our priority list.
OK, thanks for answering.
Graham
Using mSecure 6 recently installed on Samsung S21+ with Android 11 One UI 3.1,
I frequently scroll up and down the list of accounts rapidly to find what I want. When I halt my finger, I expect the items in the list to be stationary so I can read them. But instead the items are still settling into position in some kind of stretchy animation, like they are a bunch of characters suddenly arriving on-screen in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
This is a very unnecessary animation, and just makes using this essential list view rather unpleasant. I thought it might be a systemwide "feature" of some kind, and have turned on:Settings > Accessibility > Visibility enhancements > Remove animations
(ie: Animations considered harmful to visibility!)
... but that didn't help in mSecure. Is there some way to turn off this animation in mSecure?
(Actually, I see the same problem on Note 4 with Android 6, though less distracting due to slower CPU and different screen shape. So I'm pretty sure this is a "feature" of mSecure, not the OS.)