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1. Optimize Mac For Gaming
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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.

Set up your Mac for gaming

We know what your Mac clearly lacks. Games. Install Setapp and prepare your computer for a perfect gaming experience.

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!

Meantime, prepare for all the awesome things you can do with Setapp.

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Macs and gaming are two words that often don’t come together. Some people will even go as far as telling you to just forget about gaming if you’re using or planning on buying a Mac. While there are indeed games that are not available or do not work perfectly on Macs yet, there are many ways to optimize your Mac for gaming so that you don’t have to spend extra money in buying a dedicated gaming machine or so you can play multiplayer games with your PC-using friends.

Below are some common workarounds that you can try on your Mac for a smoother gaming experience.

1. Getting a Mac with a Dedicated Graphics Card
2. Upgrading your Mac’s HDD to an SSD
3. Upgrading Your Mac’s RAM
4. Configuring Your Mac’s Firewall
   1. Disabling Your Mac’s Firewall
   2. Making an Exception for Certain Applications
5. Installing Updates Ahead of Time
6. Editing In-game Settings
7. Using the Optimized Storage Feature of Your Mac
8. Closing Programs That Eat Up a Lot of Resources
9. Switching from a Wireless to a Wired Connection
10. Preventing Your Mac From Overheating

Getting a Mac with a Dedicated Graphics Card

There are two kinds of graphics cards: an integrated graphics card and a dedicated graphics card.

An integrated graphics card does not have its own memory and relies on your system’s RAM to perform tasks. This means that if your Mac is going to use it to run games, it will have to compete with a whole range of programs and applications while running. This is fine if you’re only performing non-graphic intensive tasks like casual web browsing or running simple desktop applications, but for graphic-intensive tasks like running image processing programs and high-resolution games, this can cause noticeable lagging or even abrupt crashes.

A dedicated graphics card, on the other hand, has its own memory and can run graphic-intensive tasks with hardly any issues.

Older Mac models only have integrated graphics cards installed on their systems, but newer MacBook Pro models have both integrated and dedicated graphics cards and actually allow automatic switching from one graphics card to the other depending on which card your Mac thinks it needs for the tasks that you are currently performing.

If you are not sure if the Mac that you are using has a dedicated graphics card,

1. Go to “About this Mac.”
2. Click on “System Report.”
3. Click on “Graphics / Displays.”
4. If only one entry appears under the “Video Card” category, it means you only have an integrated graphics card.
5. If two entries appear, it means that your Mac has a discrete graphics card along with the integrated one.

If you don’t have a Mac yet and you’re looking for a model that has a dedicated graphics card, you might want to check out the following options:

1. MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010)
2. MacBook Pro (17-inch, Mid 2010)
3. MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2011)
4. MacBook Pro (17-inch, Late 2011)
5. MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2012)
6. MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012)
7. MacBook Pro (Retina, Early 2013)

Upgrading your Mac’s HDD to an SSD

Aside from using a dedicated graphics card, upgrading your Mac’s HDD (Hard Disk Drive) to an SSD (Solid State Drive) can be a great help in optimizing your Mac for gaming.

There are some minor technical differences between an HDD (which a lot of older Macs come with by default) and an SSD, but to make it short, Macs equipped with SSDs boot, run, and transfer files faster than ones equipped with HDDs, and this can make a noticeable difference when playing games that require fast data transfer speed like some Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs), for example.

HDDs can be easily upgraded to an SSD at a lot of Apple retailers, but if you’re feeling a little adventurous or you just want to save some extra bucks by doing it yourself, you can find a short tutorial on how to do it at the Apple tech support forum as well as a few tips on how to choose a good SSD to optimize your Mac for gaming.

Upgrading Your Mac’s RAM

There is an ongoing debate whether upgrading your computer’s RAM really has an effect on gaming performance or not.

On one side of the fence, there are gamers who believe that having more RAM helps speed up loading times and prevent the game from behaving erratically when other applications are left running in the background.

On the other side, there are also gamers that believe that whatever difference adding more RAM does make to gaming performance, it is not significant enough to warrant shelling out more cash.

There appears to be a general consensus, however, that 4 GB of RAM should be enough to run most games without any issue, so if your Mac’s RAM is lower than that and the games that you want to play recommends at least 4 GB of RAM to run, then you might want to try upgrading. Otherwise, you might want to consider cost-free ways to optimize your Mac for gaming first.

Configuring Your Mac’s Firewall

Another common trick for optimizing Macs for gaming is by editing your firewall settings.

Optimize Mac For Gaming

Firewalls are designed to protect computers by monitoring incoming and outgoing network traffic and blocking communication attempts that they think might harm your computer.

This works great for legitimately suspicious activities, but it can also prevent your Mac from connecting to your game’s servers. To work around this, you can either disable your firewall completely (if you feel confident enough that you don’t need it) or tweak its settings to allow specific applications to communicate with your machine.

Disabling Your Mac’s Firewall

To disable your Mac’s firewall completely,

1. Go to the Apple menu.
2. Click on “System Preferences.”
3. Click on “Security & Privacy.”
4. Click on “Firewall.”
5. Select “Turn Off Firewall.”

Making an Exception for Certain Applications

To make an exception for certain applications like the game that you want to play,

1. Open “System Preferences.”
2. Click on the “Security” or “Security & Privacy” icon.
3. Click on “Firewall.”
4. Click on the lock icon, then enter the administrator name and password.
5. Click on “Firewall Options.”
6. Select the “Add Application” (+) button.
7. Select the app that you want to add to the list of exceptions.
8. Click “Add.”
9. Click “OK.”

Installing Updates Ahead of Time

Optimize Mac For Gaming Reddit

If you plan to play games on your Mac, try to install whatever system updates it needs before you start playing. It is possible to continue downloading and installing updates while you’re playing games, but it can cause noticeable lagging which can prevent you from fully enjoying the game.

Also, doing this before you play a game will help ensure that problems (like known glitches that the patches for which have been recently released) are fixed before you encounter them.

For automatic updates that download and install whether you want them or not, you can just disable it by:

1. Going to the Apple Menu.
2. Clicking on “System Preferences.”
3. Clicking on “App Store.”
4. Ticking off the boxes that say:
   1. automatically check for updates,
   2. download newly available updates in the background,
   3. install app updates.

Editing In-game Settings

Ultra-high quality game settings are often nice, but not when you have to sacrifice performance for some minor lost details here or a slight change in texture there. If your computer has lower specs and you can’t afford to have it upgraded yet, you can optimize your Mac for gaming by tweaking a few in-game settings.

What exact settings you can adjust may vary per game, but, typically, you can edit basic settings like the screen resolution that you want to play at as well as the texture quality of the game. Options ranging from high to very low quality settings are often provided, so just test them out one by one and see which ones will work best for you. If you’re not sure how to edit in-game settings, consult your game developers’ tech support forums as each game may have a different navigation menu.

Using the Optimized Storage Feature of Your Mac

Another way to optimize your Mac for gaming is to free up as much disk space as possible by using the optimized storage feature of your Mac.

To do this,

1. Go to the Apple Menu.
2. Click on “About this Mac.”
3. Click on “Storage.”
4. Click on “Manage Options.”
5. It will give you four ways to optimize your Mac’s storage.
6. First, click on “Store in iCloud.”
7. Tick the boxes that say:
   1. store files from desktop and documents in iCloud drive.
   2. store photos and videos in iCloud Photo Library.
8. Click on “Store in iCloud.”
9. Next, hover over the “Optimize Storage” option then click “Optimize.”
10. When asked if you want to optimize storage of iTunes files, click “Optimize” again.
11. Next, hover over the “Empty Trash Automatically” option then click “Turn On.”
12. Last, reduce clutter by hovering over the “Reduce Clutter” option and clicking on “Review Files.”
13. Your computer will show you a list of files stored on Your Mac sorted by category and file size.
14. Click on the files that you no longer wish to keep, press the “X” button, then click on “Remove.”

Closing Programs That Eat Up a Lot of Resources

Some people like to multitask while gaming. Maybe you’re waiting for an important message on Facebook. Maybe you want an epic background music playing while you’re slaying enemies on your favorite role-playing game. Whatever the reason may be, unless you really have to leave them running, you may want to consider closing other programs while you are gaming on your Mac.

Internet browsers and media players are notorious for being resource hogs even when they’re simply running in the background — eating up large chunks of memory that the game that you’re playing could otherwise be using to deliver an optimum gaming experience. To make the most of available resources while you’re gaming, close down all programs or applications that you don’t really need.

To do this,

1. Open “Finder.”
2. Click on “Applications.”
3. Click on the “Utilities” folder.
4. Open “Activity Monitor”
5. Click on “Memory.”
6. Check the list of running processes.
7. Click on a process that you don’t want running in the background while you’re gaming.
8. Click “Quit Process.”
9. Do this for every other process that you don’t want to run in the background.

Switching from a Wireless to a Wired Connection

If you are playing on a wireless connection and you are having some problems, you might want to try switching from a wireless connection to a wired one.

Wired connections are generally preferred over wireless when gaming because of its usual ability to reduce the frequency of dropped signals which can suddenly disconnect you from the server in the middle of a game, and because of its less susceptibility to signal interference which can affect the amount of time that it can take you to connect to game servers.

Preventing Your Mac From Overheating

Lastly, when performance-related issues arise while gaming, people usually suspect lower computer specifications as the likely culprit — which may not always be the case. In some situations, it’s actually just your computer not being able to perform at its maximum potential because of overheating.

There are several factors that can contribute to the overheating of your Mac, three of the most common of which are accumulated dust and dirt, using your Mac in a poorly-ventilated room, and placing it on surfaces that block the ventilation grills.

Accumulated dust and dirt can affect your Mac’s ability to regulate its temperature. Not only will it keep the internal fans from working properly, they can also reduce the amount of air that enters your Mac — leading it to heat up even faster than it normally would.

To prevent dust and dirt from affecting your Mac’s performance, it is recommended that you clean your Mac at least once every six months (note that this will require you to open your Mac’s case which can void product warranty if something went wrong) or just try to keep dust and dirt from getting in your Mac right from the start by cleaning your room regularly.

Regularly using your Mac in a poorly-ventilated room, especially while performing resource-intensive tasks like gaming, is also bound to take a considerable toll on your Mac’s components and, eventually, its ability to perform well.

It’s true that everyone cannot afford an air-conditioned gaming room, but you can greatly help your Mac by opening windows (just make sure not to put your Mac somewhere where it will be in the direct path of the sunlight) and installing desk fans in your room to help with air circulation. Using cooling pads along with your laptop’s built-fan can also help as well as avoiding placing it on surfaces that can block the ventilation grills under it such as tables, mattresses, and even your lap.

These are some of the simplest workarounds that you can use to optimize your Mac for gaming. There are more advanced tweaks that you can do to improve performance even more, but they will require configuring settings that could cause damage to your computer when not done correctly, so unless you know your way around computers well, you might want to try all of these options first. Usually, they are more than enough to do the trick.

Have fun gaming!