Discord’s PC system resource-hogging days are numbered – a new ‘Game Mode’ is coming to reduce CPU and GPU usage while gaming
- Discord is working on a new ‘Game Mode’ feature to reduce CPU and GPU usage while gaming
- The new feature appears to be an automatic toggle of the reduced motion feature in the desktop app when running a game.
- It is not yet clear whether improvements will be made to resource consumption when sharing the screen.
Discord is famous for its high RAM, CPU, and GPU consumption while gaming, and some of those aspects are finally being addressed.
As reported by VideoCardz, Discord is working on ‘Game Mode’, a new feature for the Discord client that frees up CPU and GPU resources while a game is running by disabling effects and animations for smoother gameplay.
Discord already offers options to reduce system resource usage, notably Reduced Motion, which reduces the intensity of animations and scrolling effects when navigating the client. Users can also turn off hardware acceleration, which prevents the app from using the GPU for better performance, and turning it off should stop “visual glitches like frame drops in games or performance issues.”
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The gameplay is very similar to reduced movement, with DiscordPreviews (in X) which describes how it reduces animations and effects automatically once a game is detected. With this in mind, Game Mode might not be the best answer to solving Discord system resource issues, especially since there is no mention of reducing RAM usage.
It’s also worth noting that Discord is an Electron-based application (a framework for desktop applications that uses web technology), which means that the Discord web application essentially runs on a built-in browser engine known as Chromium, the same engine that Google Chrome is built on, which is another application that consumes a lot of system resources.
Discord is working on game mode. Once activated, the Discord client will automatically reduce animations and disable effects when it detects a game is being played, freeing up CPU and GPU resources that could help your game run better. pic.twitter.com/Ul9v9qQqnxSeptember 26, 2026
What about screen sharing?
It’s unclear if Game Mode will do anything new besides serve as an automatic toggle for Reduced Movement while playing. In that case, Discord still has a long way to go to ensure that the desktop app doesn’t continue to appear as a system resource issue for gamers.
At the very least, getting the Discord developers to fix the issues is a great start, but it remains to be seen if Game Mode will also help keep CPU and GPU usage as low as possible while screen sharing.
As expected, the latter uses large amounts of system resources, especially when streaming at higher resolutions, but it is more reasonable compared to a simple voice chat or the app being open in the background and still hogging memory.
Still, in-game frame rates can be affected when using screen sharing, even if the resolution is lower than 1080p, and this is much more problematic on lower-end systems with less RAM. Solutions like a capture card in a separate system (or specifically in a laptop) can help solve gaming performance issues entirely, but it’s not exactly an affordable option.
If Discord can optimize the desktop app or move away from its Electron-based nature, it could go a long way toward eliminating all the major pain points.
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