Open Studio → Motion to choose Default, Snappy, Smooth, Bouncy or Subtle. Presets change stiffness, damping, mass and animation speed together. Editing any of these shows Custom; your existing tuning is preserved on upgrade.
The live preview slides and fades a dot using your current spring. Replay starts it again; Reset preview returns the dot to its starting point. Changing the controls replays it automatically. The preview stops when hidden and is released when you leave the page.
Reduce motion applies transitions instantly. Follow system preference also honours the desktop portal’s reduced-motion setting, including changes made while Mandara is running. If the portal is unavailable or has no preference, your own choices still apply. Motion intensity softens overshoot as it approaches zero; at zero transitions are instant.
Under Surface transitions, adjust playback speed separately for the bar, panels, sidebar, launcher, dock, notifications and on-screen displays. Zero makes that surface’s transitions instant; 1 keeps the global speed; 2 doubles it. These controls cover surface opening, closing and movement. Plugin content keeps its own animation settings and still respects global reduced motion. The dock’s opening-app animation and attention bounce are under Dock; wallpaper depth is controlled by the Wallpaper depth plugin.
Mandara’s springs can change target halfway through a transition while keeping their velocity. Damping controls overshoot and Animation speed controls timing; fixed durations, easing curves and artificial delays are not applied to springs. Drop-down panels and the sidebar bounce only as they open: closing, they move at the same pace but stop as soon as they reach the bar or screen edge, so they never swing back into view. Accessibility and per-surface choices are preserved when you select a preset.
The config lives under [motion], with follow_system = false and
intensity = 1.0 by default. The seven [motion.surfaces] speeds default to
1.0 and accept 0.0 through 3.0. For example:
[motion]
follow_system = true
intensity = 0.5
[motion.surfaces]
dock = 0.0
launcher = 1.5