- Why Does Fortnite Lag On Mac
- Lag On Fortnite Pc
- Fortnite Mac Settings No Lag
- Fortnite Internet Lag
- Why Does Fortnite Download Stop
When the Battle Royale genre took over video gaming in 2017, it was a race to the top to see which one would survive the hype. The winner was Fortnite, which quickly made its way across almost every device, including Macs and smartphones. With its popularity came competitive play, including esports and heated team battles among friends.
When death is permanent, every shot counts and every wall matters. That’s why even a hint of lag or slow Fortnite performance can be a game-breaker for you and your team. If you’re looking to speed up Fortnite, you may be in luck, as experts have figured out a way to improve performance with a few simple fixes.
This form of lag is unique only to multiplayer online games, and again, has to do with small delays in data transmission. These delays are measured by your Ping, which is the time taken for a round trip of data from your machine, to the server, and back again, in milliseconds (1,000 milliseconds = 1 second). Excessive Lag in Fortnite Experiencing excessive lag is another one of the top complaints when it comes to Fortnite. However, unlike server problems, this often has more to do with your own system than anything. Unless you're talking about latency lag, which is definitely an internet or server problem - more on that later.
Why Is Fortnite Slow On My Mac?
Fortnite was built by Epic Games, one of the masters of graphic processing engines, including the Unreal Engine which powers many of the best-looking games on the market. However, those visuals come at a cost — the power of your hardware. Combine this with having to process 100 players on the map at any given time, and you have a recipe for a potentially taxing game that can start to slow down.
Unfortunately, the power of your Mac is only one part of the puzzle — the other is the strength of your internet connection, which needs to constantly send and receive information from the server to ensure smooth gameplay. Here are a few ways you can speed up Fortnite.
1. Turn video quality settings to low
If your slow Fortnite game is becoming a problem, the easiest place to start is by lowering the video graphics settings. The game may not look as good, but it will perform much faster. In some cases, lowering your graphics can actually make it easier to spot enemies on the map, thanks to less detail in the visuals. To do this:
- Open Fortnite
- Click on Settings
- Under the Video tab, find Quality
- Click on Low
This will automatically set the advanced graphics settings to low, which means less stress on your Mac’s hardware and a better chance for speeding up a slow Fortnite.
2. Set audio quality to low
It might appear strange to try and speed up Fortnite by lowering the quality of audio, but there’s a reason it can help. The audio is processed by the CPU, which is already busy trying to render everything you can see on the screen, let alone hear. By setting the audio quality to low, you’re allowing the CPU and hard drive more bandwidth to figure out everything else. Changing audio is easy:
- Open Fortnite
- Click on Settings
- Under the Audio tab, find Quality
- Select Low
You shouldn’t notice a big difference in the real-world quality of audio, unless you happen to be using high-performance headphones or speakers. It can’t hurt to give it a test run anyway.
3. Play in fullscreen mode
Many Fortnite players prefer to play in windowed mode so they can carry on with other tasks while they’re waiting for the map to load, for the next match to find 100 players, or for their friends to finish without them. However, running the game in windowed mode can sometimes trip macOS into distributing its hardware resources more evenly across other applications, instead of dedicating that power to Fortnite. If your Fortnite slowness bugs you, follow these steps to make it fullscreen mode:
- Open Fortnite
- Click on Settings
- Under the Video tab, find Window Mode
- Click the right arrow until you find Fullscreen
4. Free up RAM and other purgeable space
Fortnite has plenty of options in the Settings menu to help you optimize FPS and performance. However, there are many tips, tweaks, and fixes outside of the game in macOS which can help speed up Fortnite and your other favorite games and apps too.
For example, when your Mac has been on for a while, your RAM might get full, making all new actions take longer than they should. Similarly, your operating system keeps a large amount of purgeable space occupied, which means Fortnite can’t use it to accelerate the gameplay.
Luckily, you only need one tool to fix both — CleanMyMac X. Here’s how you do it:
- Download CleanMyMac X (a link to download free edition)
- Under Speed, find Maintenance and click View All Tasks
- Check Free Up RAM and Free Up Purgeable Space ➙ Run
CleanMyMac X will then run through the backend of your macOS and clear memory and storage taken up by useless processes. Surprisingly, my own Mac just had over 13 GB of purgeable space — 5% of my total hard drive that could be leveraged by apps that actually matter. So don’t forget to repeat the process every few weeks or so, or whenever slow Fortnite game is getting in the way of playing with friends.
Have you noticed that Fortnite just seems to run like hot flaming garbage on Mac? You definitely aren’t alone, as the Apple crowd is the odd man out with this battle royale experience.
Obviously, Mac is not ideal for Fortnite or most of the games. However, there are ways that you can certainly make the experience better.
To run Fornite better on Mac, make sure you install a clean version of the game. When you play, close down all unnecessary apps and settings. Finally, to make it even smoother experience, boot your Mac in Windows and allocated additional memory to run the games.
Related:Best laptop for Fortnite
8 Tips To Run Fortnite Better On Mac
Close Background Applications
This is great advice whether you are running Fortnite on Windows, mobile, or Mac to ensure you’ve got the most memory and CPU cycles available for the game.
Shut down all other applications on your machine before running Fortnite, from chat programs like Discord to any other apps that may be running in the background.
Note that the Epic Games Launcher must actually be kept open at all times, as Fortnite can’t open as a standalone program without that app running in the background.
Turn Off Windowed Mode
Why Does Fortnite Lag On Mac
Running games in Windowed mode tends to reduce performance and really only works well for simple 2D games, as full screen mode allocates more resources to the program.
If Fortnite has been running in Windowed mode, head back to the Video tab in the Settings menu. Click the arrows on the “Window Mode” option until you hit Fullscreen.
Reduce Audio Quality
While graphics quality plays a major role in overall performance, the sound quality can also lower your frame rate.
You can turn down the audio quality by navigating the Audio tab in the Settings menu, but that’s really a last ditch effort that may cause more problems than it’s worth.
The problem is that lower audio quality hobbles you somewhat and gives the advantage to other players since listening for footsteps is a big part of the overall strategy in Fortnite’s battle royale mode.
Other Fortnite Mac Issues
Believe it or not, many Fortnite Mac players continue to report terrible frame rates even after going through the troubleshooting steps above.
An unlucky few also manage to get stuck in the loading screen or just get a message that says “busy.” If you’re in that camp, we’ve got a few more workarounds to try out before giving up.
Reinstall Fortnite
For the infinite loading problem in particular, players have reported success by uninstalling and then reinstalling both the Epic Games Launcher and Fortnite. It’s a long process, but worth a shot if it fixes the issue.
Allocate More Memory To Fortnite
Some versions of the Mac OS give the option to manually allocate additional memory to a program like Fortnite. To do this, close Fortnite and the Epic Games Launcher, then highlight the Epic Games Launcher icon.
In the File menu, go to Get Info and then select Memory. From there, you can type your maximum amount of RAM in the Preferred Size field and then re-launch Fortnite.
Webex webcam got disconnected mac.
Webex webcam got disconnected mac.
.Fortnite’s game engine accepts certain command lines that let you take more advantage of hardware like your CPU …
Change Command Line Arguments
Fortnite’s game engine accepts certain command lines that let you take more advantage of hardware like your CPU. To go about this process, first fuily close out both Fortnite and the Epic Games Launcher.
Choose the gear symbol by the launch option for the Epic Games Launcher and then navigate to Settings. In the Additional Command Line Arguments box, type the phrase “-useallavaliblecores” (without the quotation marks).
Lag On Fortnite Pc
From there, close the box, then re-open the Epic Games Launcher and try running Fortnite again to force the program to use all CPU cores at once.
Dual Boot To Windows
If all of the above troubleshooting failed for you, there is another option you might not have considered — install Windows 10 on your Mac.
This is a big, drastic step that obviously won’t work well on older Mac models that don’t have the specs to fully take advantage of Windows 10, but is an option worth trying when all else fails.
Apple has a full, step-by-step rundown on how to partition your hard drive, create a Windows boot image, and setup a dual boot system using the Boot Camp Assistant. You can find the full support page right here.
Fortnite Mac Settings No Lag
After Windows is installed, just restart your Mac and you can choose whether to boot to Windows or to the MacOS.
Once you’ve Windows up and running, head back to the Epic Games website and download the Windows version of the launcher.
Want to just switch to a Windows machine altogether? Fortnite’s system requirements on Windows aren’t that high, so you can get a relatively cheap secondary laptop to run the game.
In particular, we recommend you look at any of our budget gaming laptop choices here.
Try Fortnite On Another Platform
Still can’t get the game to run at a decent frame rate no matter what you try? Don’t forget that Fortnite is also available on Android and iOS devices, so it may just be easier to download the mobile version instead.
While there are in-game purchase options, Fortnite is also completely free to download and play on the Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, or PS4 for any console owners out there. If Mac isn’t your only available option, we strongly recommend playing on another platform.
How To Download & Install Fortnite On Mac
With the exception of consoles and iOS mobile devices, Epic Games directly handles the Fortnite download and installation process through their website.
Make absolutely sure to only go through the official Epic Games site here to download the installer! There are unscrupulous sites that try to look like the official Fortnite page but are littered with malware ads.
After downloading the installer, make sure your Mac actually meets the minimum system requirements to run Fortnite:
- Intel Iris Pro 5200 or better
- Core i3 2.4 Ghz CPU
- 4GB of RAM
- Mac OSX Sierra (10.12.6+)
Source: Dotesports
Beyond those hardware requirements, it’s important to note that Fortnite is only supported on Mac computers capable of utilizing the Metal API.
The general rule of thumb is that MacBooks released in 2015 or MacBook Air or Pro models released in 2012 or later should run the Metal API. Not sure if your Mac supports that particular graphics technology? You can find out for sure via Apple’s support page here.
Best Settings For Fortnite On Mac
Even if you meet the minimum requirements, you may still not get a satisfying gameplay experience.
Sound may lag, making you think gunshots are coming from a different direction, or you may be very noticeable visual stutters — which is a death sentence in a fast paced battle royale game.
If you have either of those problems, your best bet is set the overall graphics quality to “Low” by accessing the Settings screen and then choosing the Video tab.
You may find that reduces the graphics to a level that aren’t really worth playing, however. In that case, you can manually change each of these settings to Low one by one until you hit a stable frame rate:
- View Distance
- Shadows
- Anti-Aliasing
- Textures
- Effects
- Post Processing
For the best overall Fortnite performance settings, be sure to also set these two options to “OFF” in the Video tab:
- Vsync
- Motion Blur
.you still get significant lag even after reducing all the main graphics options, there are a few other tweaks to get better performance on a Mac. Use snapchat on mac.
Unfortunately, you may still get significant lag even after reducing all the main graphics options, but don’t worry — there are a few other tweaks to get better performance on a Mac.
how to increase fps in fortnite On Mac
While Fortnite was obviously originally intended for Windows and console environments, Mac users aren’t left totally in the lurch. With a little effort, you can get maximum FPS by utilizing any of these methods:
Fortnite Internet Lag
- Double-check that you meet minimum system requirements
- Close all background apps
- Anti-Aliasing
- Switch from Windowed to Fullscreen mode
- Turn down graphic settings
- Turn down audio settings
- Reinstall Fortnite entirely
- Allocate more memory to Fortnite
- Dual boot to Windows
Have you found any other troubleshooting methods to get a better Fortnite experience on Mac? Let us know in the comments below and we’ll test out your tip!