If something has managed to bring out the gamer in you, but you’re still a rookie in the field, you might wonder what you could do to enjoy gaming to the fullest. Luckily, you don’t have to spend a fortune on expensive devices or the latest gaming equipment on the market for that. With a little tweaking and optimization, your Mac can turn into the perfect gaming tool and provide a great gaming experience.
Use a reliable VPN
It’s a well-known fact that during busy times, your internet service provider might deliberately limit your bandwidth and slow down your internet speed through throttling. Most ISPs do that as a way to regulate network traffic and minimize bandwidth congestion.
Needless to say, when this happens your gaming experience is significantly affected. No one wants to be in the middle of an intense gaming session and then suddenly have the game freeze for a few seconds, right when they had to make an important move. Game lags are extremely frustrating and can ruin the whole gaming experience for players.
Wondering what that has to do with a VPN? If you don’t want to change your ISP, but you want to put an end to throttling and reduce ping, the smartest solution is to use a Mac VPN. Apart from ensuring better speed when gaming, a VPN can also help you access geo-blocked content. So, if you want to play a game that’s only available in certain countries, a VPN will help you bypass these restrictions.
Check your settings
A Mac is not specifically designed for gaming, which means that it might not fulfill the system requirements for playing certain games. That’s why you need to familiarize yourself with your Mac’s basic characteristics, such as processor, memory, hard drive space or graphics card.
Then when you choose a game, you can check if it’s compatible with your device. Most games have these system requirements listed on the packaging, in the user’s manual or on their website, so it won’t be difficult for you to find this information.
If your Mac checks all the minimum system requirements for gaming, that’s great. But it would be much better to go the extra mile and ensure your device goes beyond the basics and fulfills the recommended requirements. That might require you to delete some files or disable features that you don’t normally use on your computer.
Do a bit of spring cleaning
We can assume you don’t use your Mac exclusively for gaming, but for all sorts of daily tasks as well. If you’re like everybody else, you probably have a desktop overcrowded with documents, files and all sorts of items that aren’t supposed to be there. You might also have tons of unnecessary apps and documents all over the place, using up all your storage space.
Where does all this clutter and chaos lead to? Decreased system performance and lower speed, and that’s exactly what you don’t need if you want to enjoy smooth and flawless gaming sessions.
Fortunately, a bit of spring cleaning is all you need to address these problems. You can start with your desktop by organizing files into folders and clearing up the space. Then you can move on to the deep-cleaning stage by getting rid of apps, duplicate files, tools and all the stuff you don’t need anymore.
Keep your software up to date
No device or system will ever be completely flawless. Even if users don’t notice it all the time, there will always be vulnerabilities and errors affecting system performance. Sometimes, these flaws can also affect your gaming experience.
That’s why manufacturers develop and deliver regular updates to improve the efficiency of their products. Constant updates ensure that bugs and errors are fixed and system issues are addressed in due time. If you don’t want these problems to get in the way of your gaming experience, it’s a good idea to keep all your Mac’s software up to date at all times.
Close open apps when gaming
Are you in the habit of letting apps run in the background while working at your computer or having countless tabs open in your browser? That’s one habit you’ll have to give up if you’re looking to improve your gaming sessions. Apps and tools running in the background can use up a lot of system resources, leaving your computer unable to perform as expected while you’re playing a game.
So, before you hit play, make sure you close all open apps and ease the burden on your computer. You’ll definitely notice that your Mac responds better when there aren’t as many open apps taking up memory.
As you can see, you don’t need much to improve the gaming experience on a Mac. These simple tips and tricks will help you make the most of your gaming sessions and take you one step further in improving your gaming skills.