Playing online Flash games can help you relax, but not if the experience is marred by unwanted lag. If a Flash game lags, you will experience notable delays between your input and the actions being performed on your screen, which can make playing impossible. If you use the Mozilla Firefox browser for playing these games, you can take some precautions to prevent lag from occurring. The speed of your computer as well as your Internet connection can also play a role in how much lag you experience while playing Flash games.
Reduce Image Quality
Step 1
Launch Firefox and load the Flash game with which you are experiencing lag.
Step 2
Right-click anywhere on the Flash game to open a context menu with settings.
Step 3
Click "Quality" and then select either "Medium" or "Low" to reduce the visual quality of the game. This lessens the load, especially on older systems, and can reduce input lag resulting in more responsive game play.
Enable or Disable Hardware Acceleration
Step 1
Launch Firefox and load the Flash game with which you are experiencing lag.
Step 2
Right-click anywhere on the Flash game and then click "Settings" from the context menu.
Step 3
Click the "Display" tab and then click the check box next to "Enable hardware acceleration." If enabled, it uses your graphics card to display the Flash game quicker than the Flash player could on its own, which can reduce lag. Disabling this setting if you experience lag can fix the problem by preventing hardware compatibility issues with the Flash player.
Clear the Cache
Step 1
Launch Firefox and load the Flash game with which you are experiencing lag.
Step 2
Click the "Advanced" tab and then click "Delete All" in the browsing data and settings section. This clears the local storage and data for Flash content. Reload the Web page with the Flash game to re-download the data, which can improve the lag if it was caused by incorrect or corrupt cache settings.
Step 3
Right-click anywhere on the Flash game and then click "Global Settings" from the context menu.
Allocate More Cache Space
Step 1
Launch Firefox and load the Flash game with which you are experiencing lag.
Step 2
Right-click anywhere on the Flash game and then click "Settings" from the context menu.
Step 3
Click the "Local Storage" tab and then drag the slider to the right to increase the amount of information that the currently active Flash game can store on your computer. This can improve the lag as the data is stored on your computer instead of loaded from the site.
Free Up Resources
Step 1
Close any Firefox tabs that are not necessary while playing the Flash game. The fewer tabs you have the more memory is available for the game.
Step 2
Click the "Firefox" button and then click "Extensions. Click the "Disable" button next to any extensions that are not essential.
Step 3
Close any memory intensive programs such as Photoshop, media players or other open browsers to free up more resources for the Flash game.
Step 4
Finish or stop any active downloads that could be tying up bandwidth and resources.
Step 5
Run an anti-virus and malware scan to ensure that there are no malicious programs running on your computer which can cause performance issues.