Exciting new Xbox feature accelerates game download speeds in one click

Xbox Series X (Image credit: Matt Brown | Windows Central)

What you need to know

Xbox Insiders can test a new feature that dramatically improves the download speed of games.
The feature lets you manually suspend games from the page for managing your downloads.
You could already suspend games, but this feature makes it easier to do so while managing downloads.

Microsoft has a new feature for Xbox Insiders to try out that helps dramatically increase the speed of downloading games. The new feature allows you to manually suspend games directly from the page for managing downloads. Suspending a game can increase download speeds more than tenfold. In our testing on a Gigabit connection, we saw a jump from 40mbps to 750mbps when we suspended a game.

It's important to note that you could already suspend games on Xbox consoles, including the Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and Xbox One. The feature in testing for Xbox Insiders just makes it easier to do so from a different location.

Eden Marie, engineering lead at Xbox, shared the new option on Twitter.

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Hey Xbox Insiders! Did you notice these changes rolling out now? Suspend in the queue will let you download at full speed while making sure your game remains resumable (or quick resume-able on Series X|S). New banners in the Full Library will take you to more useful categories! pic.twitter.com/L49winRpM0Hey Xbox Insiders! Did you notice these changes rolling out now? Suspend in the queue will let you download at full speed while making sure your game remains resumable (or quick resume-able on Series X|S). New banners in the Full Library will take you to more useful categories! pic.twitter.com/L49winRpM0— Eden Marie (@neonepiphany) March 16, 2021 March 16, 2021

Placing an option to suspend games in the page for managing downloads should make it easy to boost game download speeds. Many of the best Xbox One games are quite large, so suspending a game to quickly finish a download can help you jump into a new game without having to wait long.

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Sean Endicott is a News Writer at Windows Central, where he covers Windows 11, Surface hardware, Microsoft 365, AI, apps, and the broader PC ecosystem. Since joining the site in 2017, he has written well over a thousand articles across the Microsoft landscape, covering breaking news, analysis, and feature reporting.

He writes Windows Wrap, a weekly column covering the biggest stories in Windows and the PC industry, and what they mean for the platform going forward.

Before joining Windows Central full-time, Sean worked in journalism and media production after earning a First Class degree in Broadcast Journalism from Nottingham Trent University. Outside of tech, he is an award-winning American football coach based in Nottingham, England, and was named BAFCA Youth Coach of the Year in 2024.