How to Optimize your Mac for gaming

Mac may not be as good for gaming as PCs however, Today’s Macs have plenty of power to play the latest popular games; they’re just a bit less hands-on and customizable compared to their PC counterparts. With our guide, you can make several important changes to help prep your Mac for games and make sure you can play them without a hitch. This article will help you know how to optimize your Mac for gaming.

Upgrade your Mac

The new Macs are much more gaming-friendly. If your iMac or MacBook Pro (we don’t suggest gaming on anything less) is several years old, you may want to upgrade to a new model in other to optimize your Mac for gaming before tackling your favorite games.

The newer versions of the iMac and the MacBook Pro include both integrated and discrete AMD Radeon graphics cards, allowing you to dedicate the discrete card to gaming, a much better outcome than using the GPUs of previous models

Want to check the graphics? Head to the Apple menu in the upper-left corner, and select About This Mac. In the Overview section, you’ll see a label for Graphics that will show exactly what GPU is in your Mac.

You also have the option to buy an external GPU, or eGPU, that works with your Mac. These will only work with Macs that have Intel processors, but it’s a strong alternative if you have an older Mac and don’t want to buy a new computer right now. Apple has more information on how to manage eGPUs if you are interested.

System cleanup and update

You want your Mac as clean and speedy as possible for the best gaming experience in other to do this you have to optimize your system. Start by making sure the latest updates have been applied, then take a look at your storage. Delete any apps and downloads that you don’t use or don’t provide much value for you to make sure your Mac has as much free storage space as possible. Clear out your Trash when you are finished.

If you want a little help with this project, you can also download a cleaner app like MacKeeper, which will automate this process and help identify junk files.

Disable background processes

Macs tend to have background apps that are always running, collecting information, or constantly updating. But for gaming, you don’t want anything that’s going to take up your precious RAM, so it’s a good idea to optimize your Mac by disabling some unnecessary background processes. If you don’t use your Notification Center, for example, we suggest starting there.

Step 1: Open your Terminal. You can find Terminal in the Utility folder, which is in Applications.

Step 2: Paste or type in this Terminal command to get started:

launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.notificationcenterui.plist

Step 3: Now paste this command to kill Notifications:

killall NotificationCenter

Step 4: The Notification Center should now be disabled (you may get an alert telling you something is wrong, but that just means it worked). If you ever decide you need the Notification Center again, you can bring it back with this command:

launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.notificationcenterui.plist

You can now launch the Notification Center again. You can also visit the Mac Activity Monitor to see if there are other background apps that you don’t need and can disable. This is very important when trying to optimize your Mac for gaming

Close your apps and start up a game

When trying to optimize your Mac for gaming you should, Take a final look at any open apps and close down all nonessential ones, especially memory-hungry browsers. You can use the Activity Monitor or gsxCardStatus to see what apps, if any, are using your discrete GPU. You want your game to be the only thing using your discrete GPU when you begin.

Now open up your game and get started! You’ll want to spend at least a few minutes messing around so you can look for ways to make the game run as smoothly as possible. If you are using Steam, make sure all updates and patches have been applied before you begin.

These are some ways to optimize your Mac for gaming, hope this is of great help and you can enjoying playing your games of your Mac