Exciting new Xbox feature accelerates game download speeds in one click

Xbox Series X
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.

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.

Sean Endicott
News Writer and apps editor

Sean Endicott brings nearly a decade of experience covering Microsoft and Windows news to Windows Central. He joined our team in 2017 as an app reviewer and now heads up our day-to-day news coverage. If you have a news tip or an app to review, hit him up at sean.endicott@futurenet.com.