What to do when League of Legends won’t open on Mac or Windows PC?

Many times a month, users of Mac and just gamers in general search for ‘what to do when League of Legends won’t open Mac.’ This leads us to believe if you have a similar query, you are not alone with this issue. This can be really off-putting in a situation when you are just logging on to play the game and you face this issue.

Playing games that involve going in teams carry a risk and a technical issue has chances to ruin your day. This article will help you identify the reasons that might be causing this issue and how you can overcome them. Let’s start with the issues:

Causes

There could be a myriad of issues that might be causing your game to not launch/work. In order to solve the issue, you need to find out the issue first. Let’s look at what are the possible scenarios that could stop your game from working:

Server issues

First and foremost, we can get the most obvious one out of the question, server issues. This is a problem that you as a user cannot address. If the reason you cannot start your LoL game is because of any server related issues, then you can’t do anything but wait for the company to fix the issue.

This can also be a plus for two reasons, mainly because you will not have to do any fixing and such issues get fixed promptly because companies do not want to lose users at all. These kinds of issues are important to address for them, therefore you will be able to get back to it in a very short time. There are different servers set according to regions and their geographical locations by Riot Games that run LoL. Check your server according to region to make sure if that is the cause of your problem. Go to the link to check your region’s server status.

If it comes out as negative, it is only a matter of time before it gets sorted by the company. However, if you find out that the server in your region is working fine, it means the issue is for you to sort out. It could be due to many reasons, continue reading for other reasons.

Internet issues

It sounds like we are asking you to restart your router, which is the case when your internet is acting up and your family asks you to fix the WIFI. But that magic trick is only bound to getting the flow of signals going. To check whether your internet connection is the hindrance between you and a smooth game of League of Legend, check for any of the following:

Lag Report

Problems with any electronic device are common, which is why Riot Games makes sure it covers all ground when providing assistance in case of any issue regarding a computer. A Lag report is one such tool to find out what is causing the problem in your device’s network or the local area’s ISP. Granted that this tool is still a beta tool, it is not readily available across all regions of the world. The regions it does cover include EU Nordic & East, EU West, and North America. Make sure you identify your issue using the link.

Firewall issues

According to data shown in multiple stats, the famous video game has crossed 115 Million monthly players in 2021. Your security rules protecting you from any unauthorized access or breach is not a bad thing, even if the protocol ends up being too rigid. It’s the age of digital warfare and using cyber assets to harm people.

Even though firewall has for the most part learned and accepted the game as a secure network option, there can be instances when it blocks the game from running. Sometimes your security rules get updated and configuration takes a while, either way, if that is the reason, you can sort it out through this process:

• Using outdated programs can end up harming smooth flow of process. Having a firewall in place does not necessarily mean it will stop your game from launching, but using softwares that is expired or outdated can do that to you. Make sure you are updated, so that your firewall and antivirus program recognizes your LoL client and doesn’t stop your game from running.
• You need to identify if the firewall is causing the problem in the first place. Disable your firewall and run League of Legends to check whether the firewall was blocking your game. If it does not launch, even without firewall’s protection, that means the issue is somewhere else. However, if the game does run without a firewall, all you have to do is enable a program exception on your firewall. This may vary for different firewall programs, in most cases you will just have to check a box for LoL in the firewall settings. In another case, that box will be named LeagueClient.exe.

Packet buffering and loss

Coming to packet loss and packet buffering, this might affect the quality of game rather than completely hindering running the game. Regardless, if you want to identify and address this issue, follow the recommendation of Riot Games.

They have officially cleared Netalyzr as a tool to diagnose these issues and address them accordingly.

• In case of packet buffering as the main reason behind the delay or low quality of game, make sure you disable or turn off any other streaming or data-intensive apps. Since LoL itself is largely data-intensive it cannot take large bandwidth programs and applications running simultaneously as itself.
• In case of packet loss, the indication goes towards loss of data from your end. It means some of the data that gets sent is not being received by LoL server and getting lost on the way. Contacting your ISP might help you in addressing this issue first-hand. But this can also mean you are trying to reach the server at a time of high traffic too, therefore all users could be temporarily restricted which gets solved in no time.

DNS

The DNS settings can be an issue for some players who do not use their ISP to connect it to the internet. When you use suboptimal settings, you get less than satisfactory results. Patching and lagging issues are some of the problems you can face due to this issue. There are different procedures to fix this for Windows and Mac, follow these steps respectively:

For Mac:

• Go to system preferences in settings
• Go to the Network, and click on Active Connection
• Click Advanced and go to the DNS tab
• Put 8.8.8.8 in the first row and 8.8.4.4 on the second row
• Confirm by clicking Okay
• Finish by clicking on Apply

For Windows:

• In Control Panel, go to Network and then Internet
• Go to the Sharing Center
• Find Change adapter settings
• Find your adapter in use and right click to go to Properties
• In Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) go to Properties again
• You will reach the ‘Use the following DNS server addresses’, confirm
• Put 8.8.8.8 in the first row, 8.8.4.4 on the second row
• Confirm by clicking Okay
• Go to All Programs in the Windows start menu, find Accessories
• On Command Prompt click right and Run as administrator
• Type and enter “ipconfig /flushdns”
• Restart your computer

Solutions

Open from hard drive

Many times a clear solution is to locate and run the program from where it’s stored. Follow these instructions:

• Look for the right folder, most commonly stored in the C:/ drive. Check for either a League of Legends named one or Riot Games one.
• Find the LeagueClient.exe file and right click to Run as administrator
• You are good to start playing and smashing all your enemies!

Reinstall the game

Fixing the issues start from a simple restart of the PC or Mac to getting the entire game anew. Which is why deleting your old files and reinstalling the game is  not such a bad option. All you will have to do is install the setup files again and run to install the game. Not anything fancy, but it can help you fix the issue in an easy way.

Clear registry files that are outdated

In case you redid the process of installing your LoL program, chances are that you forgot an old and outdated registry file on the computer. That file might be hindering your process, here’s how to go about it:

• Go to your Windows search bar and look up ‘regedit’
• Click on Run command and confirm with yes
• Go to Edit and then Find, lookup ‘League’
• All the options that appear in the right hand side of the registry are to be deleted
• Restart your PC and the reinstallation process

Repair the launcher

Your launch file for LoL could be corrupt or have issues that can be fixed by forced download from the launcher file, here’s how you do it:

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• Locate the folder for the game in your device, start from C:\Riot Games\League of Legends
• Inside this folder, go to RADS and then Projects
• From here delete the LoL_folder
• Launch the game again for your program to be redownloaded

Fix new client files

Sometimes, the opposite is true, where your file is facing errors because of the new file instead of the old client. If you have updated the game recently, follow these steps to fix the issue:

• Go to your game folder and go in \RADS\system
• Try to open this file user.cfg in the notepad
• Make the change from “leagueClientOptIn = yes” to “leagueClientOptIn = no”
• Save file and relaunch
• Delete the LeagueClient.exe file from the folder
• Now run lol.launcher.exe

Force the game to repatch

Sometimes patches that are supposed to help the game perform better, ending up causing errors. If your LoL launcher won’t open because of this, try repatching using these steps:

• Go to the install folder and in \RADS\system
• Delete the lol_patcher and lol_launcher files and folders
• Reopen the game

Fix LeagueClient executable

In any case if the game won’t start, you might want to reinstall the clients for the game. Delete and redownload via this process for Windows:

• Go to the install folder in the location where it’s downloaded
• Check if the LeagueClient.exe file opens without error, if not, delete it
• Run the launcher lol.launcher.exe file
• The client will open, press the Launch button

For Mac:

• On Finder, go to the Applications section
• Go to Show package contents from League of Legends by right clicking
• Now click on the LoL folder
• Delete Lockfile
• In the same folder, click on LeagueClient and relaunch

 Use Initiate Full Repair tool

 The game itself has a repair tool, here’s how you find it:

• When you launch the client, click on the gear icon
• Open settings
• Go to the general tab and then click Initiate Full Repair

Administrator issues

Many systems have certain security rules that run according to protocols. Many times it happens that you do not have administrator’s permission to run the game. Sometimes the mid-game pauses and errors are also due to the same issue.\

It cannot be easier to solve this one through, simply right click on the League of Legend applications and choose Run as administrator. If you are using it on Mac however, follow this:

• Go over to System Preferences, and onto Users & Groups
• Check if your account is listed as Admin
• If not, Click on the lock icon
• When signin appears, login with th administrator account, yes you will need access to give your account access
• Allow your account to ‘Use this computer as Administrator’
• Rerun/launch LoL as administrator

 As a Windows user, try this fix:

• Uninstall all LoL files from your PC, including the setup files
• Restart your PC
• Use a registry cleaner to be more efficient
• Go to the official site and download the game again to reinstall

Granting the right permissions in case of programs to run smoothly is the main thing you need to deal with in order to keep your device’s flow going.

No skipping patches

You cannot continue with the game if you skip and choose which patches you want to download. The updated patches take references from the previous ones on updates, make sure you follow through each of those in order.

Those were all the ways you could fix an issue with your League of Legends game. Hope this helps in answering your ‘What to do when League of Legends won’t open Mac’ query. Use any of these steps and get back to beating your enemies in no time.