What are some tips on how to make steam downloads faster? Should I use VPN with Steam? Can you explain how this works? I’m trying to download some games, but it’s taking forever! Why does this happen, and what can I do about it? What are the best practices for downloading games on steam? What does TCP have to do with internet connections and steam download speed? For more answers to questions like these, keep reading!
5 Tricks to Speed Up Steam Downloads
Steam is a pretty good service overall, but one drawback is that it tends to be slow. The good news is that you can use a few tricks to speed up your downloads. This post will share five ways to cut down on wait time and get those games to download a little bit faster. There’s no guarantee they’ll double your speed, but these tips should help you at least a little bit.
Trick 1 – Use Steam Downloads Manually
Manually downloading games from Steam can result in a decreased amount of bandwidth usage compared to having Steam set for automatic game updates. To manually check for new game updates, follow these steps: Sign in to Steam, navigate over to Games and then select Downloads. Select My Games from the drop-down menu. Now you’ll see a list of all your games. Click on each game individually and click Update when prompted. After every update is complete, close out of that tab in your browser and continue onto another tab until all updates are finished being downloaded.
Trick 2 – Upgrade Your Internet Connection
If you’re downloading a lot of big games or getting stuck trying to download something, your internet connection might be part of your problem. If you’re running at 5 Mbps, a big game can take hours and hours. That’s no good if you want to get gaming right now! So upgrade your internet connection so that it’s better than dial-up (yes, it can be done for just $20/month). We know – not everyone has access to $5/month broadband from their local cable company. But there are other options out there: satellite service like Wild Blue makes affordable plans available in many areas around America; DSL is becoming more common again, and calling your phone company and asking for faster speeds may also pay off.
Trick 3 – Set up your own download server
If you’re planning to download a lot of games/software from Steam, it may be more convenient for you if your files are hosted on a computer in your local area network (LAN). There are several free tools that will help you do that. For example, with BitTorrent Sync, you can set up a server on any computer in your LAN and have all its files available via BitTorrent Sync clients installed on any other machines connected to it. Pretty neat! Keep in mind that when doing so, only users who have accounts on all participating computers will be able to download their data.
Trick 4 – Stop Torrents From Downloading at the Same Time as You are on Steam
- One way to keep your Steam download speeds up is by ensuring that no torrents are downloading while you’re playing games on Steam.
- There are two ways to do this.
- The first is by installing a piece of software like Peer Guardian (not an affiliate link).
- This will stop all other torrents from downloading when it detects Steam running, which sounds nice in theory, but may get on your nerves if you share a connection with someone who does torrents regularly.
- If that doesn’t bother you, go for it. In my case, I chose a different method: preventing new downloads through uTorrent.
- It’s simple enough to set up and won’t slow down your internet traffic in any noticeable way.
- To prevent new torrents from starting as long as Steam is running, open uTorrent and click Options at the top of your screen.
- From there, select Preferences and then choose Bandwidth. Under Maximum upload slots, set it to 0 so that nothing can start until Steam closes.
- Once you’ve done that, click OK and restart uTorrent so that these settings take effect immediately.
Trick 5 – Wait for Other People To Download First
Steam downloads allow you to start downloading while other people are downloading, meaning your downloads will complete much faster. To access these downloaders, right-click on a game in your library and select Properties from your menu. Then head over to Local Files and click on Verify integrity of game cache. This will load an entirely new page with two options for you—select either option based on which one is more appropriate.
Conclusion
If you have a high-speed internet connection, it’s possible that your internet service provider is limiting your download speeds. We recommend using a VPN if you are in need of higher download speeds. You can use a free one like HotSpot Shield, or you can try something like NordVPN which has better performance and security than most free services. Regardless of which route you decide to go down, please let us know how it works out for you.
Read More: How to Split Screen on iPhone