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jayo2k
Stadia Player
Stadia Player

Fixing stuttering and lag on Mac

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I love Stadia but had lot of stuttering and huge drop in frame rate but I found the solution (at least for mac)

Since I did this, I have not experienced any stuttering at all and now enjoy FPS to the fullest (mouse and keyboard)

- Disable location Service

On mac, click on the mac icon then :

-> System preferences -> Security and privacy -> Privacy -> uncheck "Enable location service".

Since I did this, I have experienced absolutely no stuttering at all

13 Kudos
Best Response
RJpianist
Stadia Player
Stadia Player

I see! Well one thing that helped me get smooth gameplay over WiFi was to use a WiFi analyzer app to find a clear channel and then go into the router settings to switch to that channel. It's especially important if you live in a congested area with lots of neighbors. I do this whenever I plan to play for a while on WiFi. 

Also blocking the mic permission in chrome for Stadia.com helps, but that might be just a Chromebook issue. 

Also, making sure you are running with no extensions, nothing open except Stadia, and NOTHING running in the background. 

Hope something here helps. 

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1 Kudo
Psyclopps
Community Member

Disabling location services was the fix for me... why does this cause so many issues? 

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2 Kudos
23 Replies
codesplice
Gold Stadia Guide
Gold Stadia Guide
Interesting find, thanks for sharing! I'll have to keep that in mind if I see other similar complaints.
0 Kudos

I have also been experiencing stutter on an i9 macbook pro 16in, and turning off location services gave me smooth sailing.

3 Kudos
Lindh3409
Community Member

Is this the kind of repeating hang ups that occur with some minutes intervals??? I’ll try your solution tomorrow and if it’s gone I’ll give you a big Kudos.

Update:
- Red Dead Redemption 2 - Tested for 10 minutes and works good.
- Ghost Recon - Tested for 5 minutes and works good.

Main issue I had was with Division 2, not tested yet but I´ll do that tonight.
This is NOT a problem related to specific games, but I´ll do the Division 2 test anyway just because I had obvious issues in the game, thats most likely gone now (Thanks).

I´ll be back :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Kudo
jayo2k
Stadia Player
Stadia Player

Did not buy Read dead because I have it on Xbox one S and do not play it much... But Ghost recon since it was on sale (I also have it on Xbox), I did buy it on Stadia but I hat a input lag and was not 60fps so...

0 Kudos
Lindh3409
Community Member

Wow it really works. Bin playing Division 2 for more than an hour and no lag whatsoever. This is a genuine solution *****

2 Kudos
EOD
Founder
Founder

That and opening in an incognito window made it even better for me.

0 Kudos
Killermentat
Community Member

Thank you!  I just signed up today and stadia worked great on a Windows machine at work but my iMac was having horrible input lag. The games were unplayable. I turned off location services and everything is working great now. 

Thank you again, there is no way I would have stumbled on that fix on my own. 

0 Kudos
andresvia
Community Member

It is definitely better without location services, but far from perfect, what else can be done.

0 Kudos
RJpianist
Stadia Player
Stadia Player

What seems to be the trouble @andresvia ?

1 Kudo
andresvia
Community Member

@RJpianist it is hard to explain, I recorded a video and uploaded to YT (I'm sorry I'm not youtube material), check video around the 2:00 time mark, https://youtu.be/CI8zQj2M74k?t=120

It is kind of a Schrödinger's problem since it doesn't seem to happen that much when recording :face_with_tongue: 

I guess I expect gameplay to be alway super smooth, but from now and then (in Mac) I'm experiencing these skips and stutters and is really annoying to the point it ruins the experience.

It is maybe something in my machine but I can't figure it out, I have everything closed and I don't run services or daemons.

Anyway. More suggestions about what can be done to make the experience in Mac better are well received.

Thanks.

0 Kudos
RJpianist
Stadia Player
Stadia Player

I see! Well one thing that helped me get smooth gameplay over WiFi was to use a WiFi analyzer app to find a clear channel and then go into the router settings to switch to that channel. It's especially important if you live in a congested area with lots of neighbors. I do this whenever I plan to play for a while on WiFi. 

Also blocking the mic permission in chrome for Stadia.com helps, but that might be just a Chromebook issue. 

Also, making sure you are running with no extensions, nothing open except Stadia, and NOTHING running in the background. 

Hope something here helps. 

1 Kudo
Valakar
Founder
Founder

After applying all the recommendations here on my MacBook pro 2019 is still not working as good as it does on my old windows laptop that I bought 7 years ago =s please fix this

0 Kudos
Valakar
Founder
Founder

I confirm that it started to work for me perfectly after applying all the suggestions from here and making sure that there wasn't any background process running (like backup software).

:beaming_face_with_smiling_eyes::smiling_face_with_sunglasses:

 
 
Tags (1)
0 Kudos
Psyclopps
Community Member

Completely agree with this. It is great on Chromecast, Galaxy Tab S6, S20, any windows PC/laptop... but on Mac, it stutters constantly 

0 Kudos
Psyclopps
Community Member

Disabling location services was the fix for me... why does this cause so many issues? 

2 Kudos
tannersnacks
Founder
Founder

This finally fixed it. So obscure why this would cause the stuttering. It was unbearable for a while.

Tags (2)
1 Kudo
esp211
Stadia Player
Stadia Player

I spent the past 4-5 days trying to figure out what the stuttering issue was on my iMac 5k. I've tried everything from disabling location services to Qos to upgrading my internet speed. What finally worked was creating a dedicated login for Stadia. It turned out that my wife's and my iPhone were causing the issue on my main login for the iMac. Since I created a new login with just Stadia/Chrome running, I've had 0 issues.

3 Kudos
RXShorty
Platinum Stadia Guide
Platinum Stadia Guide

Thanks for sharing your solution! :smiling_face_with_smiling_eyes:

0 Kudos
esp211
Stadia Player
Stadia Player

Welcome! It is important to not link your Apple or iCloud accounts to the Stadia login. I turned off all Airdrop, Siri, Sidecar, or anything that uses WiFi or Bluetooth and solely set it up to use Chrome and Stadia. I also installed the Stadia+ extension to up the visual quality. 

Also, last night the lag was so bad and when checking my router activity, my iMac was using 150+ mbps download. When I simply rebooted the computer it went back down to 10-12 mbps and no more lag. 

I finally received Chrome Ultra yesterday and it looks amazing on my 65” LG Oled CX TV. That is probably the best way to enjoy the game but I’m a keyboard and mouse guy so I’ll continue to use the iMac despite the slightly reduced quality. 

1 Kudo
esp211
Stadia Player
Stadia Player

I wanted to add that switching to VP9 really improved the stability on my iMac 5K. You need to use Stadia+ and then in game hit shift+tab to access the settings menu. 

0 Kudos
GrimmReapha
Stadia Player
Stadia Player

This was it. This was the cause for Canceling my Stadia Pro subscription.

Been looking all over the net for a solution to no avail. This suggestion mixed with a slightly altered Chrome & it works slightly better. 

I’m kind of frustrated with Stadia(hope that it’ll improve)

I’m a keep searching for a solution in the meantime 

0 Kudos
kristjanson
Community Member

This worked for, me thank you so much! 

1 Kudo
avv3lenato
Stadia Player
Stadia Player

After upgrading to 11.1 from Catalina, Wi-Fi became unusable on my late 2014 iMac 5K. At first I tought was my router... (never had any kind of problem before) after some tests, ended that the problem was the OS upgrade. Connection drops frequently, ping goes high and low. Online conferencing, gaming and Stadia totally unusable; via Chromecast is perfect. Recent OS update 11.2.1 didn't fix this bug... Seems that my iMac switch from my router to the wifi adapter and back (Same SSID). If you have an adapter try unplugging it; connection is WAY worst, but no more dropping connection.

0 Kudos