We’ve all done it – rushed home, finished work, woke up early – only to be met with a 4-hour download time for our favorite game. There’s nothing worse than your download paused or inching along in the Microsoft Game Store. But fear not, I spent way too much time looking at ways of ways to speed up slow downloads on Xbox One, Xbox One X, and even the newest Series S and Series X consoles – so you don’t have to.
A slow or paused download is a common Xbox One problem (not limited to just the One) and is nothing new. Taking forever to download games has been plaguing gamers ever since OTA (over-the-air) updates and patches have become available. But finding ways to improve your download speeds for Xbox games and system updates still remains somewhat of a mystery, although I did my best to decipher it.
I’ll help walk you through numerous methods to fix slow download speeds on your Xbox and make sure your favorite game is updated and ready to go – right when you want to play it.
In This Guide
Option 1: Enable the ‘Keep my console up to date’ Setting
One setting you can check to help make sure your games are downloaded and updated when you’re ready to play them is the ‘Keep my console up to date’ setting.
This will allow your Xbox One, Xbox One S, etc. to download console updates in the background after it has been shut off, meaning you’re not wasting valuable playtime downloading system updates, and then downloading games. Certain multiplayer games require new system updates if you’re to play, and sometimes a system update might be pushed on users for security reasons with no ability to bypass it.
Option 2: Make Sure Your Xbox Storage Stays On
If you’re trying to speed up slow game downloads in the Microsoft Store and still having issues with your games not automatically updating on your Xbox, Xbox One X, or Xbox Series S|X, there’s also a chance that you might have the ‘When Xbox is off, turn off storage’ setting enabled.
Make sure this is not checked so that your Xbox can turn stay in a standby state and update your system, and games.
It’s worth noting that if you’ve done a hard reset or cleared the cache on your Xbox and haven’t powered it back up, your Xbox may not automatically wake to download the updates.
It might sound obvious but make sure your Xbox is plugged back in as well. Sometimes people will pull power bricks to perform a hard reset.
Option 3: Enable the ‘Keep my games & apps up to date’ Setting
Much like the ‘Keep my console up to date’ setting, the ‘Keep my games & apps up to date’ setting helps keep games updated in the background when you’re playing. If you’re a hardcore gamer and always on your Xbox, this will help you keep other games you’re playing up to date.
Note: Speeds may be slower when playing and downloading multiple games. This is anecdotal, but we have noticed a difference when quitting out of any games.
While this doesn’t directly speed up the downloads on your Xbox, it will give you a headstart, allowing the game to download when you’re at school, work, or overnight.
Not only does this work when you’re away from your console, but networks are typically less congested during these time periods which will allow for faster internet speeds and downloads on your Xbox.
Option 4: Try Pausing, and then restarting your game download
One of the easiest and simplest things you can do to speed up downloads on your Xbox is to simply pause and restart the download.
Whether this changes your place in the queue, reconnects in some strange way that it didn’t before, or is completely a placebo, we’ve seen some more realistic download speeds after pausing and restarting our game download or update.
This could also have something to do with the server you’re connected to and how Microsoft is distributing its digital content to customers.
Option 5: Quit out of the game you’re trying to update or download
One thing that we’ve noticed that slows down Xbox download speeds is having the same game open that you’re trying to update.
Newer Xbox games will typically let you launch prior to being completely downloaded. You might see a “Ready to Launch…” action on the Xbox menu for certain games.
Typically this will bring you to a loading screen with some goodies or links to additional content. But what we’ve noticed is this will significantly slow down your game download speeds.
Our guess is that even being on the loading screen, pulling party details, news, and other dynamic information from the game’s servers requires bandwidth, effectively slowing down speeds from the Microsoft store. If you’re on a high bandwidth connection like fiber, this might not be a problem for you.
Option 5: Temporarily remove other devices from your network
If you’ve followed the options above and still are wondering why your Xbox game downloads are paused or slow, you could try lowering the burden on your network by removing high-bandwidth devices such as:
- Cell Phones
- Other Gaming Console
- Laptops and PCs
- Alexa, Nest, and other IoT devices
With the availability of IoT devices, a lot of individuals are adding more devices to their network than their hardware is capable of handling.
I’ve helped outline a detailed list of troubleshooting tips and tricks for your frustrating home internet problems in How to Improve Internet Speed and Connection for Online Gaming. Most people aren’t aware of the variables at play when it comes to your home internet connection.
It covers a variety of topics including device location, internet speeds, and tutorials for purchasing modems, routers, internet plans, and more.
Do you have any tips for others on how to fix or speed up slow game downloads on your Xbox? We would love to hear from you! Drop us a comment below, send us a message on our Contact page, or visit and comment on our YouTube channel. Game on!
0 Comments