so I have an idea to help my players, at the stage they are on they are level 9 and are a sneeze away from becoming 10 and over the course of the 2 year campaign they have acquired a lot of magical items that all require attunement between the 6 of them, its to the point they are always racking there brains on which ones they should keep attuned to and which ones to have on stand by but the biggest thing they don't like is the 1 hour attunement time frame between attunements, so my idea is once they have attuned to an item at least once and that item has not been attuned to anyone else and has not exceeded the distance ruling, that they can swap between items and instead of it taking an hour it takes 10 minutes. so 10 minutes to end the attunement and another 10 to attune to a previous item. im thinking maybe a homebrew house rule OR if this is too OP make it a feat option for them to take. i know there is a homebrew feat by critical role that lets them gain a 4th attunement slot which i might use if need be i just want to hear what other DMs think of this idea

I'd have to say I like it off the top, lol.  Our group has a similar issue, where we each have more items to attune to than slots and so choices are made.  It wouldn't be bad to have a chance to re-attune (although some of the items have STRANGE requirements lol)   As for being OP, I can see how it might kind of "easy mode" part of the tough decision making of being a fairly powerful hero involves.

Personally, if I was DM, I would look at maybe granting a 4th slot at 10, if it seemed they really should be able to attune to more stuff.

Well, if they're having problems with attunement slots at level 9 they're probably OP anyway, expected permanent magic items by that level are on the order of two, one of which might require attunement.

I would definitely not go in the direction of reducing the attunement time. The whole point of it is to stop exactly what you're describing - having a bank of items that get traded around the party when they feel that it's more convenient for Todd to have the cube of force today because Jenny will benefit from the necklace of adaptation and there's a gassy monster to fight, even though Jenny usually carries it.

If anything I would go the opposite route and give items a 24 hour 'de-attunement' period, where once you un-attune, nobody else can attune to it for a day.

Powerful magical items shouldn't be getting passed around like that - they are extremely high value items, worthy of respect! It's a bit like you have six characters and each of them has five luxury sports cars but they've basically decided that three of their sports cars are somehow communally shared and belong to everyone in the group.

no no what im saying is the items get swapped out for that specific person, for example i have a sorcerer in the party that has 2 staffs that require attunement plus shoes of spider climb, but he got a 4th item that now requires attunement, so my idea was to swap between his 4 items, not between players because i agree that would be far to OP, i have a warrior who has cloak of flying, magic tattoo, ring of jumping, the great sword Hazirawn and a 5th item that i cant remember at the moment, so he would switch between those specific 5 items, if another player wanted to attune to one of the warriors items i would still force them to do the normal attunement rule sets, sorry for the confusion on that

Quote from Noobicus >>

so I have an idea to help my players, at the stage they are on they are level 9 and are a sneeze away from becoming 10 and over the course of the 2 year campaign they have acquired a lot of magical items that all require attunement between the 6 of them, its to the point they are always racking there brains on which ones they should keep attuned to and which ones to have on stand by but the biggest thing they don't like is the 1 hour attunement time frame between attunements, so my idea is once they have attuned to an item at least once and that item has not been attuned to anyone else and has not exceeded the distance ruling, that they can swap between items and instead of it taking an hour it takes 10 minutes. so 10 minutes to end the attunement and another 10 to attune to a previous item. im thinking maybe a homebrew house rule OR if this is too OP make it a feat option for them to take. i know there is a homebrew feat by critical role that lets them gain a 4th attunement slot which i might use if need be i just want to hear what other DMs think of this idea

These limits are absolutely intentional and designed to make choosing which attuned items to use a challenge - you'll either make the game worse if you cut attunement time to 10 minutes (if the time reduction actually helps them juggle more effectively) or you'll have no effect at all if the time difference doesn't matter (e.g. if you hand-wave both 10 minute and 60 minute time gaps as downtime), in which case your idea was bad because it didn't achieve your goal.

Now, one of the big balls 5E drops is that your party has no good reason to get rid of excess items - keeping extra attunables around just in case is the only credible plan, since there are no or negligible benefits to offloading the item.  That's the approach I'd recommend.  For example, you mentioned in another post you have a sorcerer with 2 staves, slippers of spider climbing, and a new mystery item.  The slippers are a tier 3 artificer infusion, so WOTC's official stance is it's balanced to let the sorcerer swap the slippers out for any other tier 3 or less artificer infusion.  That would be my recommendation - introduce an actual artificer NPC willing to trade the party's items for other items.  In terms of magical footwear, the infusions tables suggest you should let the sorcerer trade the slippers for boots of elvenkind, but most PCs would rather take the bag of holding the tables also imply is a totally fine swap.

Quote from Noobicus >>

no no what im saying is the items get swapped out for that specific person, for example i have a sorcerer in the party that has 2 staffs that require attunement plus shoes of spider climb, but he got a 4th item that now requires attunement, so my idea was to swap between his 4 items, not between players because i agree that would be far to OP, i have a warrior who has cloak of flying, magic tattoo, ring of jumping, the great sword Hazirawn and a 5th item that i cant remember at the moment, so he would switch between those specific 5 items, if another player wanted to attune to one of the warriors items i would still force them to do the normal attunement rule sets, sorry for the confusion on that

In that case I'd personally just leave it as it is, but if you think it will be more fun for your players to be able to switch quickly between them then go ahead and drop it to ten minutes. There are optional rules in the DMG for allowing a short rest to take ten minutes and a long rest take just one hour, so I don't think it'll break your game.

This falls into the same category to me as not being able to change out spells on the fly. The best solution that has been used in my group so far has been to allow the characters some kind of research option that informs their decisions on what to prepare. It can be pretty vague like a scouting mission so, you might prepare gear or spells that compliment that end. Maybe research a certain enemy and put on that Armour of Lightning Resistance. Some people might not like these ideas but, many spells and items are too niche to see use without a heads up.

If you want some sort of hybrid system, I would say let some vendors sell "Potions of Attunement". They would be fairly expensive (or priced based on tier of item they can attune up to - i.e. A tier 1 potion can't let you attune to a tier 2 or higher item), but allow the user to instantly attune to one item of their choice immediately after drinking it.

Now it's another resource they need to balance the cost of along with potions or other consumables. 

Edit: Potion of Attunement

Quote from Noobicus >>

so I have an idea to help my players, at the stage they are on they are level 9 and are a sneeze away from becoming 10 and over the course of the 2 year campaign they have acquired a lot of magical items that all require attunement between the 6 of them, its to the point they are always racking there brains on which ones they should keep attuned to and which ones to have on stand by but the biggest thing they don't like is the 1 hour attunement time frame between attunements, so my idea is once they have attuned to an item at least once and that item has not been attuned to anyone else and has not exceeded the distance ruling, that they can swap between items and instead of it taking an hour it takes 10 minutes. so 10 minutes to end the attunement and another 10 to attune to a previous item. im thinking maybe a homebrew house rule OR if this is too OP make it a feat option for them to take. i know there is a homebrew feat by critical role that lets them gain a 4th attunement slot which i might use if need be i just want to hear what other DMs think of this idea

Sounds like you're too deep into your campaign to implement this idea now, but in mine I have mostly done away with 'vanilla' attunements. Most magic items that require it also require a form of attunement specific to the item -- with some, you have to do the usual meditation but under specific conditions (i.e. under a full moon). Others have more immediate ways of connecting to them (place a drop of your blood on each gem on the torq), while some attunements are almost mini-quests unto themselves ("face one of your fears").

Doing that forces players at their limit to think a lot more carefully about which ones they want active, given that it could be a while before they're able to attune to something again if they drop it. It also seems to make the attunement, and the item, more meaningful.

As others have said, the limit and the attunement process are there for a reason, but it can feel somewhat arbitrary and pointless to players when it's just "new magic item, go sit in a corner for a bit to attune to it."

Now, one of the big balls 5E drops is that your party has no good reason to get rid of excess items - keeping extra attunables around just in case is the only credible plan, since there are no or negligible benefits to offloading the item.  That's the approach I'd recommend. 

I'll second this. Your players need something else to do with the items you're heaping on them. A pretty common solution to this is to provide some kind of base of operations that they can purchase and upgrade. Set the costs high and allow the players to sell magic items to partially fund the efforts.

A base of operations can provide party-wide benefits that can be either narrative or mechanical based on how powerful you want the party to be.

Regardless, I recommend abiding by the attunement restrictions. Having played in a high level campaign with a lot of magic items, I was surprised at how well the system worked and how it really forced us to make tough choices which translated to meaningful choices. Having your cake and eating it too is not a tough choice and it doesn't really say much about your character aside from wanting to be as strong as possible.