Go Ethereum Mist Light Clients – How to Run Mist Without Downloading the Blockchain

Using parity

You can have parity emulate geth's IPC (ie, pretend to be geth), by running:

parity --light --geth

If you want to be lazy, you can add to your configuration file:

[parity]
light = true
geth = true

Then start mist as:

mist  --syncmode light

If you get a blank screen when mist loads, see here.