If you notice lag or poor image quality during your game session, the cause may not be your internet connection alone. Other common factors:
Your device doesn’t meet our requirements. In this case, your device’s memory and CPU are heavily loaded while you play.
You are far from our servers. The closer you are to our servers, the lower the ping and the better the quality of your session.
Try the following tips before and during your gaming session. They are universal and also work for other cloud gaming services.
Use a fiber optic or Ethernet cable, or 5 GHz Wi-Fi. With 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, DSL, or a mobile network, the gameplay will most likely not be smooth.
Reduce the load on your network. If you share your internet connection with others, ask them not to download or upload files or watch videos while you play. Streaming services like Netflix can share bandwidth with other activities, but cloud gaming needs a stable connection.
Reduce the load on your device (memory, CPU): close all other browsers, tabs, programs, and processes. See an example of a properly prepared desktop in this screenshot.
Make sure VPN, firewall, and ad blockers are disabled. You can also use Incognito mode in the browser — then you don’t need to disable these tools manually.
Try different browsers (Chrome, Opera) and our Windows app. If one of them gives you better image quality and gameplay, stick with it.
If something didn’t work the first time (you couldn’t connect to a virtual machine or a game didn’t start), try again in a few minutes before contacting support. Often, simply restarting your router, device, browser, or the app solves the problem.
Disable power-saving mode on your device (especially on phones, tablets, and laptops).
Try playing at different times of day. Your internet may work better when the network is less loaded.
Keep in mind competitive shooters. Regardless of your connection quality, in competitive multiplayer shooters like Fortnite, Warzone, or CS2, where every millisecond counts, the experience won’t be the same as playing on your own hardware.
macOS Location Services can degrade network quality. We recommend disabling them for now. Learn more.
If you experience high input latency, try changing your mouse polling rate and lowering the bitrate. You can find instructions for your mouse model online. Learn how to change the bitrate and FPS of the stream here: How to change bitrate and streaming FPS.
If your FPS drops (stutters), disable all overclocking apps (e.g. MSI Afterburner).
Update all drivers on your device. Make sure you are using the latest versions.