The description for the Temporal Accelerator says:
Improves time-related effects by 5%
Automation decreases shatter lag
I haven’t been able to find much information on “shatter lag.” When automation is off, I think I’ve noticed lag when you shatter a large amount of crystals at once, so clearly this is having an effect on that, but why would you ever want to turn automation off? Is there a benefit to the lag?
I am playing the android version of the game.
Shatter lag is largely an obsolete behavior where old code used to shatter time crystals one by one. Automation uses newer code that does shattering in bulk with some optimizations. There are no benefits in non-automated shatter and it is here mostly as a fallback in case something goes wrong.
We will likely switch to new optimized mode permanently