Optimize Windows 10 for Gaming So, these are some of the ways through which you can optimize gaming performance in your Windows 10 PC. Do note that with every new software update and newer games, the need for optimization becomes lesser, as developers are focused on making their games run on maximum number of PCs as possible.

Since the early days, Macs have never been associated with hardcore gaming, unlike their PC counterparts. Games for Mac were customarily more simple and none of the top games were even present on the platform for a long time.

Top games require top-level setups. But with Apple’s focus on beauty and simplicity of design, Macs have always been offered as turnkey solutions in few variations. That meant little wiggle room for all the customizations best Mac games required.

Meanwhile, the gaming industry skyrocketed, mainly on PCs, which made it easy for people to build powerful computers to take full advantage of all the latest games and then update those computers with even more processing power, RAM, and new video cards to keep up with the gaming evolution.

Macs eventually did catch up, or maybe games have reached a plateau of sorts, when most top computers’ power and graphics got good enough to run just about any new game, short of VR. Today, gaming on Mac is becoming increasingly more popular, and more developers are dedicating resources to producing new (as well as porting older) hit games for the operating system. Thus the iconic StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty was developed for both PC and Mac at the same time, while hugely popular Stardew Valley was ported to Mac at a later date. Steam games for Mac are also gaining popularity worldwide as the Steam platform continues to grow.

So if you have a Mac today and want to dive into the gaming world — it’s not that hard. All your Mac needs is just a little tweaking and optimization to make sure you can really enjoy the experience.

How To Optimize Mac For Gaming

When you start thinking how to play games on your Mac and about what you need to do to optimize your Mac so you can get maximum performance out of it, first of all, think about getting more space, freeing up memory, clearing up clutter, turning off unneeded features, and lowering your graphics card requirements. If none of those do the trick, you probably need another Mac, which we’ll also discuss.

Free up space for Mac games

Whether you’re getting Steam games for Mac or download one-off titles from the App Store, one thing is for sure — they take up lots of gigabytes on your hard drive. More than that, besides the actual size of the game, it’s also recommended that you keep at least 25 GB (and preferably more) of your hard drive free, as some of that space would be used while you play.

How do you free up so much space? Start by going through your Mac’s folders and see if there is something you truly haven’t used in a while. Check Movies, Music, and Pictures folders in your user Library — those tend to be quite heavy. Even if you can’t delete something, consider moving it to the cloud.

Then go to the Applications folder and check if you can purge an app or two there. Anything you haven’t used in a year is probably better deleted and reinstalled than kept occupying space on your disk. And, of course, don’t forget to delete games you no longer play.

This process may take a while, and in fact it’s quite hard to delete things off your drive completely, as various affiliated files are always clinging on and hiding in the most remote folders of your Mac. The good thing is you can use software to detect clutter and remove it completely, leaving you enough space for even the best Mac games.

To start, download a pro-level disk analyzer like Disk Drill. Besides its main purpose of recovering lost files and data, it’s a top utility for revealing what your disk space is consumed by. Simply use the “Clean up” tab to scan your disks and remove anything you don’t need anymore.

When it comes to uninstalling applications, solely removing the folder from Applications could potentially leave hundreds of associated files all over your hard drive. With an optimization utility like CleanMyMac X, you can use an Uninstaller scan and find everything that belongs to the application to delete it at once.

Keep an eye on your Mac’s performance

While having lots of free space will generally boost your Mac’s performance, it’s not the only contributing factor. For instance, RAM and CPU are just as important. And once you hear the overheating fans, you really need to take a look at how your processing power is being consumed.

Built into your Mac is a useful utility called Activity Monitor. Launch it from your Applications folder to scroll through tabs like CPU, Memory (RAM), Energy, etc. Activity Monitor shows all the active tasks consuming your Mac’s resources and allows to terminate those tasks right from the app as well.

But in most cases, CPU, RAM, and energy levels won’t give you a complete picture of what’s really happening with your computer. That’s where you need to use a top-tier utility like iStat Menus, which in addition to all the above shows air flow, network usage, frames per second, and much more. It also lives in your menu bar, making it easy to monitor your Mac continuously.

Optimize your Mac

So what do you do when you spot your Mac performing worse than it should? How do you improve the speed and make your Mac feel brand new?

The best way to increase your Mac’s performance is to regularly (e.g. once a month) use high-quality software devised for that purpose. CleanMyMac X here is a leading program that boasts millions of users worldwide, mostly due to its simple one-click improvements. Through various scans, from speed optimization to mail attachment removal, you can resolve problems exactly where they come up.

Anytime you use CleanMyMac X, it would take your computer 95% there in terms of its capabilities. To achieve the final 5%, there are a few more things you can optimize with some manual work.

For example, if you don’t find Notification Center useful at all, you can turn it off and save the power your Mac uses to keep it running in the background. Unfortunately, macOS doesn’t give you a way to turn it off in the settings, so you need to use Terminal:

1. In Terminal, enter launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.notificationcenterui.plist
2. And then follow up with killall NotificationCenter
3. Notification Center should now disappear and won’t relaunch with the next system restart

Likewise, you can disable the Dashboard utility if you don’t use it often:

1. In Terminal, enter defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES
2. Then restart the Dock with killall Dock

If you think through every process running on your system, you can probably come up with more functions that you don’t need. However, Dashboard and Notification Center are probably the most common once people want to see gone.

Finally, when you’re playing a game, check if you can lower the strain on your graphics card in its settings. Frequently you can change the resolution, level of details, and shadows to increase processing speed. To get a little extra game booster for Mac, try playing a game in an app window rather than full screen.

Choose the best Mac for gaming

If you had the most powerful computer available, no game would be a problem. And truth be told, PCs are easier in the sense that you get a box to fill up with everything you need and reshuffle the parts with ease. When it comes to Macs, parts are difficult to change, and most of the time you have to decide on what you need right away.

So how do you not make a mistake? What is the best Mac for gaming?

The two most important Mac components to games are processor and video card. While processing power is fairly straightforward — the more the better (with Macs you also have to note the Turbo Boost each model can provide) — video cards have always been somewhat tricky.

Video cards can be discrete or integrate. The former are faster but independent from the processor. The latter are part of the system and able to use available processing power. That’s generally what you want here.

There are currently three integrated video cards available on Macs: Intel HD Graphics 5000, Intel Iris Graphics, Intel Iris Pro Graphics. So any computers featuring these are more or less suitable for gaming. Just remember to opt in for the highest CPU you can afford. Generally, this means selecting from such models as:

• 15-inch MacBook Pro
• 27-inch iMac (5K or regular)
• 21.5-inch iMac (most powerful model)
• Mac Pro

Laptops of 13 inches and smaller are significantly less powerful and thus not recommended for serious gaming on Mac. And if you choose to employ your 15-inch MacBook Pro, keep in mind that games for Mac are the greediest when it comes to energy consumption.

You can try all sorts of manual hacks to increase your battery life, from dimming your screen to quitting apps to turning off WiFi. But for a seamless way to make your battery last you up to 20% longer on every charge, use an automatic app like Endurance, which takes advantage of all ways to prolong your gaming on Mac and balances battery life and CPU at the same time.

Following recommendations above will ensure that your computer is 100% prepared to face the best Mac games out there. Sure, you can perform a few tweaks manually, but nothing will compare to using specialized software to get your Mac to its top shape! Best of all, apps mentioned here are all available for a free trial through Setapp, a platform of over 150 best-in-class Mac utilities and tools designed to elevate your everyday experience. Now you’re ready to buy all those Mac games!

Macs are great for two things: creative and business work. When it comes to gaming, people generally stick to PCs because Macs usually have limited AAA titles and Apple hasn’t invested much into optimizing the MacOS for gaming.

But thanks to platforms like Steam and Humble Bundles, more games are available for Macs. Still, Macs are known to under-perform when gaming – even when rigs meet the minimum system requirements. Tweaking your machine can help make things run a little more smoothly.

Related: Steam controller review

Here’s how to optimize Mac for gaming.

Update Your Software

First, make sure that your Mac is up-to-date. Updates can optimize your machine’s performance and ensure that you have all of the latest security patches installed. To update your system:

• Click the Apple Icon at the upper-left corner of your display.
• Select App Store.
• Click Updates at the top.
• Choose Update All.

Along with your MacOS, the process will also update most of your apps.

Free Up Space and Clutter

Optimize Gaming Pc

Games are resource intensive, so the first step to optimizing your Mac is to clean things up. The goal is to free up some space and get rid of system clutter.

Start by uninstalling apps that you don’t use or don’t want anymore. Take a look at your startup apps and disable any that are resource-intensive.

MacOS Sierra also introduced a new feature that helps clear up space: Optimize Storage. Here’s how to access this tool:

• Click the Apple Icon.
• Choose About this Mac.
• Click Storage.
• Select Manage.

There are several options here (which you can go through on your own at a later time), but the most important one is “Optimize Storage.” Clicking the Optimize button will automatically remove iTunes movies and TV shows that you’ve watched on your machine.

This step is really the most useful if you consume a lot of media on your Mac. Even if you don’t, you can still take advantage of the other options on the Manage window, like:

• Reduce Clutter: Allows you to sort through and delete documents and other items stored on your machine.
• Store in iCloud: Allows you to store files and photos in iCloud to save space.
• Empty Trash Automatically: Saves space by automatically erasing items that have been in the trash for 30 days.

To reduce the load on your processor, start by launching the Activity Monitor.

• Click the Go menu and select Utilities.
• Double-click Activity Monitor.

The Activity Monitor will display all of the opened apps and processes, and it will also tell you the amount of resources each process is using.

Close out programs that are hogging a lot of resources.

To close a program:

• Select the program on the list.
• Click the Force a Process to Quit button at the top-left corner.
• Click Force Quit.

Clicking Force Quit instantly stops the app from running and taking up resources. Follow the above steps to close out any programs that are unnecessary or using a lot of resources.

Just make sure that you don’t quit any essential programs, as this can make the operating system unstable.

After you’ve reduced the load on your processor, you can start closing unimportant apps that are taking up space.

Take a look at your Dock. Do you see any apps with a small black dot under their icon? That black dot means that the app is open and occupying space in memory. Many Mac apps will stay open even if you close their interface, and that can hinder your machine’s performance while gaming.

To free up some memory:

• Right click an unimportant app in your Dock.
• Click Quit on the menu.

Doing this will close out the app and free up the memory it was using. Repeat this process until you’ve closed all unimportant apps that are running in the background.

Adjust Graphic Settings and Try Different Window Modes

Adjusting a game’s graphic settings will have the biggest impact on your Mac’s performance. The higher the graphics settings, the more resources the game will demand.

Check out our guide on how to get Fortnite to run better on mac.

Whenever you launch a game, whether it’s through Steam, directly or through another platform, you typically have the option of adjusting the graphics settings. Some games have “high,” “medium,” and “low” settings that will make adjustments for you automatically. If not, you’ll need to make the adjustments manually for each setting.

Choosing lower settings will reduce the load on your machine, making it easier for games to run smoothly.

Most games will allow you to save your settings so that you don’t have to readjust them every time you launch them.

Optimize Your Mac For Gaming

Along with adjusting the graphics settings, you can try playing games in both Windowed Mode and Full-Screen Mode to see which one works best. Some users find that Windowed Mode makes things run more smoothly, but performance is typically game-dependent. Give both options a try with each game you play to see which one works best for each title.

While your Mac will probably never compare to a Windows PC for gaming (that’s not what they’re designed for), you can still optimize your machine to make gaming more fun when you’re on-the-go or you don’t have access to a PC.

Are Macs Good For Gaming

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