We’ve all been there. You log onto your PC, you click on a casino to play a few games – say you have about ten to twenty minutes before you’ve got an errand to run – and things start slowing down. The games get clunky, missing beats, and the loading times start taking longer than the games themselves. Gaming latency, of course, can be a problem with every PC, even the most capable gaming ones.
What you shouldn’t do is blame the casino – especially if you’ve found it using a trusted comparison platform. The review site JohnSlots UK, for instance, reviews the slots games on leading sites by a huge range of criteria, including playability and performance. Platforms like this don’t recommend casinos to players unless they’re functional and accessible, so the chances are, it’s not the casino. It’s your browser. And that’s good, because it’s fixable. When the gaming experience degrades, rather than rage-quitting, just a few techniques can help your browser to cope with your chosen platform and get you back on track for a smooth, uninterrupted gaming experience. Even if it is just for twenty minutes!
Keeping Your Browser Updated
Our first tip is to keep your browser updated. One of the reasons gamers can get so easily frustrated is because, in 2024, they just expect their tech to run well – especially if they’re trying to run simple casino games, rather than expansive adventure games.
But it’s important to remember that these platforms are expansive in their own way. To load all of the thousands of games that might be available, your browser needs to be up-to-date with the latest version, ensuring it has enhanced performance and the graphic drivers are optimised to render efficiently.
Closing Unnecessary Tabs
If your browser is updated to the latest version, the solution to high latency might be a little more simple. Having multiple tabs open – or running any background processes – can strain your system’s resources, making it run slower and with more issues if they’re not deleted. Before you start playing, make sure you close any tabs or applications that you don’t need, freeing up memory and processing power to run the games far more effectively.
Clear Your Cache
Your cache might also be a big issue here. Over time, a browser stores data from multiple websites, which can ultimately slow down its performance and make it more difficult to run casino games smoothly. To sort this, simply click on your history, delete your cookies, and clear your cache to start things afresh. It might mean you have to log into all of your platforms again, but it’s worth it if it fixes your gaming issues.
Disable Unnecessary Extensions
Browser extension and plugins can also interfere with game performance. These are additional software components that add functionality to your browser, and while they can be incredibly useful, they do consume system resources like CPU, memory, and network bandwidth.
When you’re running a resource-intensive activity like casino games, plugins and extensions can slow down your browser, leading to choppy gameplay and delayed responses, which is why it’s so important to audit them if all the other steps have failed. Look through all the plugins that you think you need, and delete any extensions that aren’t necessary.
If you don’t want to permanently delete any of them, some browsers also allow you to create multiple user profiles, which means you can set up a dedicated gaming profile and only use extensions that are essential for your gaming experience. If you have a console, you can also use the browser installed on that to see if that makes a difference – although it’s worth noting that the PS5 doesn’t have a browser like the PS4 or PS3 did.
Adjust Your Settings
Speaking of specific browsers, some browsers allow you to optimise the settings and make them more efficient at resource-intensive activities. Hardware acceleration, for instance, can allow your browser to offload certain tasks to the GPU, rather than relying solely on the CPU.
Some browsers also use animations and effects to enhance the visual appeal of certain platforms, which can be reduced or disabled by adjusting the appearance settings. As well as this, ‘lite’ mode or ‘data saver’ mode are also useful to speed up loading speeds, with some browsers allowing you to compress content and block certain elements draining power.
A Smooth Gaming Experience
As we mentioned before, you don’t have to simply sit back and accept a bad gaming experience, especially when it comes to online casinos. Yes, they are platforms that offer a lot of games, but it’s not like you’re playing a brand new RPG. A lot of the time, the issues can be pinpointed back to the browser, and just following these simple steps can help to reduce that latency and get things running smoothly again.
If they don’t, then it might mean that other issues are at play. Your network bandwidth, for instance, might not be sufficient enough to run online games, or your computer might be a little too old to keep up with modern gaming updates.
In both cases, it might be more worth using your phone and utilising mobile networks to play games more smoothly. In 2024, most online casinos are optimised for mobile – with mobile apps specifically designed to optimise performance and connectivity – which means you won’t be missing out on anything. But check out your browser first, because the problem might be hidden in plain sight!