How to decrease & fix Packet Loss in Discord?

Packet loss in Discord severely impacts the performance of voice and video calls. When facing packet loss, you will experience voice cuts during the call and even changes in the voice of the participants, such as sounding like a robot, and more.

When you are communicating with a server on the internet, which would be Discord’s servers in this case, the communication is carried out via packets. These packets are small pieces of information that are sent out to the target server. When these packets are unable to reach their destination, the packets are essentially lost and this behavior is called packet loss. 

Packet loss in Discord can occur due to various factors, such as the use of hardware acceleration, quality of service, and much more. We will cover a number of solutions that you can follow to resolve the issue on your end. 

1. Check Discord Server Status

The first thing that you should do when starting to troubleshoot packet loss on Discord is to check the server status. This will help in validating whether the issue is on your end or a server outage is causing the problem to arise. 

In the latter case, there is not much you can do except wait for the team at Discord to resolve the issue with their servers. Once that has been done, you should be able to use Discord without any issues.

With that said, in such an instance, you can try switching to a different region in your voice channel settings in case a specific region is affected only. This should help as a temporary workaround until the issue is fixed. 

There are various ways you can check for Discord server outages. The best way would be to use the official website for server status which you can find with this link.

2. Change Discord Process Priority

One of the ways you can remedy the packet loss issue with Discord is to change the process priority on your Windows machine. Each process on your system has a priority which tells the processor the importance of each process. 

This helps the CPU in deciding which processes to run first and prioritize over other tasks when there are multiple operations to perform. Changing the process priority of your Discord will allow your CPU to prioritize the app over other processes when needed. This can help in isolating the packet loss, in some cases. 

Follow the instructions below to change the process priority of Discord:

1. First, open the Task Manager. To do this, right-click on the Start Menu icon and select Task Manager from the menu.

   

2. After that, go to the Details tab on the Task Manager window.

   

3. Then, locate Discord.exe from the list of processes. 
4. Right-click on the process and select Set priority > High.

   

5. You will have to do this for all of the Discord processes. See if that resolves the issue. 

3. Disable Quality of Service Setting

Quality of Service is a feature in Discord that allows you to change how Discord packets are sent across your network. This essentially changes Discord packets to high priority which means the router prioritizes the transmission of these packets over others whenever required.

However, as mentioned by Discord in the Settings menu as well, this can lead to misbehavior and inconsistencies on some routers and connections. As such, you will need to disable the Quality of Service option to see if that resolves the issue.

Follow the instructions below to do this:

1. First, open the Discord client on your PC.
2. After that, open the Settings menu by clicking the gear icon next to your username.

   

3. On the Settings screen, navigate to the Voice and Video tab on the left-hand side.

   

4. Then, scroll down and locate the Enable Quality of Service High Packet Priority option.

   

5. Use the slider to turn it off.
6. Reconnect to the voice channel and see if that resolves the issue. 

4. Disable Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling

Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling is a feature that gives some freedom to the CPU by offloading some of the tasks performed by the scheduler to a GPU-based scheduler. Since the CPU time is of great value in a computer, this can help in reducing the latency and improving the performance overall, even if a little bit.

In some scenarios, this can cause packet loss on your Discord client which is why you will need to toggle the feature off in your Windows graphics settings. With that said, the issue can sometimes subside by simply toggling the feature, which means you will be able to turn the feature back on if you wish to without any issues. However, that is not guaranteed and may not happen in every case.

With that in mind, follow the instructions below to disable Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling:

1. First, use the Win key + I shorthand on your keyboard to open the Settings app.
2. After that, navigate to the System > Display > Graphics > Default graphics settings path in the Settings app.

   

3. Then, use the slider under Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling to turn it off.

   

4. Restart your computer for the change to take effect.
5. See if the problem goes away. 

5. Flush DNS Cache

DNS is an important component of any network as it is used to resolve the domain names to their respective IP addresses. To make this process efficient, the resolved domain names are stored locally in a cache to prevent the same resolutions in future.

In some instances, this DNS cache can get damaged or corrupted which can impact the performance of certain network services. In such a situation, you will have to flush the DNS cache on your Windows machine to resolve the issue.

Follow the instructions below to do this:

1. First, open the Start Menu and search for the command prompt. After that, click on the Run as administrator option to open an elevated prompt.

   

2. In the command prompt, type in the following command and press Enter:
3. ipconfig /flushdns
4. Once you do that, restart your computer.
5. Open Discord and see if the problem has gone away.

6. Reset Network Settings

If flushing the DNS cache does not isolate the issue for you, the next step would be to reset your network settings. This will restore all of your network configuration to the defaults, as well as reinstall the network adapters and more.

Resetting the network settings is usually the last resort in fixing any connectivity issues on your computer. This is quite easy to do, follow the instructions below:

1. Start by opening the Settings app with the Windows key + I shorthand on the keyboard.
2. After that, navigate to the Network and internet > Advanced network settings > Network reset location.

   

3. Then, click the Reset now option to reset your network settings.

   

4. Wait for your PC to restart and then see if you are still experiencing packet loss.

7. Clean Install Discord

Finally, if nothing else resolves the issue, you will have to perform a clean installation of the Discord client on your computer. This is apparent since the issue is not related to your network settings at this point. As such, the problem is caused by the Discord app itself.

A clean installation of Discord means removing every trace of the app from your PC before reinstalling the application. To do this, follow the instructions below:

1. First, close out the Discord app on your computer completely.
2. Then, use the Win key + R shorthand to open the Run box.
3. In the Run box, type in %AppData% and hit Enter.

   

4. After that, in the File Explorer window, locate the Discord folder and delete it.

   

5. Then, open the Run box again and enter %localappdata% this time.

   

6. Once again, locate the Discord folder and delete it.
7. Now, open the Start Menu and search for the Control Panel. Open it up.

   

8. In the Control Panel window, go to the Uninstall a program option.

   

9. From the list of apps, locate Discord and double-click it to uninstall.

   

10. Once the app has been uninstalled, restart your computer.
11. After your PC boots up, download the Discord setup file from the official source here. 
12. Install Discord on your computer and see if the issue still occurs. 

The packet loss issue in Discord should go away with the solutions above. The network settings on your computer and the Discord server outage are the primary reasons behind such issues. As such, make sure your network configuration does not run into any inconsistencies to prevent the issue from occurring again.