Speed Up Game Downloads – DIY in 5 Ep 261

Опубликовано 2 ноября 2025, 14:00

In 2023 nearly 9 in 10 games sold were digital downloads, or in other words, huge files handled by often-outdated internet infrastructure, resulting in bandwidth bottlenecks. How can gamers improve the speed of their game downloads?

Switch & Switch 2
You can tinker with the Switch’s settings to increase the maximum transmission unit (MTU), which will slightly increase the download speed. You can do this by going to System Settings, Internet, Internet Settings, then selecting your network. Pick Change Settings then MTU, and change 1400 to 1500.

PS5
This next tip has been speculated to be effective across all consoles, but so far has only been confirmed for the PS5. You can put your PlayStation in rest mode to make it download faster.
You may be able to adjust the Quality of Service (QoS), depending on your internet service provider. View your PS5 settings in Connection Status to identify its MAC address, then log in to your router by typing your IP address into a browser’s URL prompt). Look for the QoS settings. If you find them, choose your console’s MAC address and change the priority to Highest or Maximum. Your router will prioritize your PS5 over all other devices on the network.

System-agnostic tips
Things that will help with all consoles include limiting yourself to one download at a time, or updating console firmware to optimize system performance before initiating other large downloads. If your download is stalling, it might simply need pausing and reinitiating to reconnect to the server.
You can change your console’s Wi-Fi frequency to 5GHz. The signal strength is weaker, but the higher frequency offers less interference and faster speeds. If you’re using 5GHz keep your router and console in the same room, ideally adjacent to each other. Generally good advice, though even better is to ditch Wi-Fi entirely and use an Ethernet cable. Every current-gen console has an Ethernet port (original Switches and Switch Lites will need adapters). The market has abundant options for fast Ethernet cables, so take your pick.

Hopefully you’ll have downloaded all the games you need in time for our next episode. If you have a tip for your console’s download speed, feel free to share it in the comments!

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0:00 Intro
0:34 Switch & Switch 2
0:56 PS5
1:46 System-agnostic tips