If audio cuts out, video freezes, screen sharing lags, or the session drops, the cause is almost always the internet connection or the computer on one side of the call, and this article helps you find out which.
ℹ️ Work through the sections in order. The quick checks solve most problems, and each later section goes deeper. Your student, or the adult helping them, should run the same checks on their side, because a problem on either end affects both people.
Quick checks that take under a minute
Try these first, on both sides of the session.
Close every app and browser tab you are not using for the lesson, especially anything playing video or music, downloading files, or syncing.
Plug your laptop into power. Many laptops slow themselves down on battery.
If you are on Wi-Fi, move closer to the router, or plug in an Ethernet cable if you have one.
Ask anyone else in the home to pause streaming, gaming, or large downloads during the session.
Turn off any VPN unless your school or organization requires it.
Leave the session and rejoin. Leave by clicking the red End Call button in the controls bar, the dark gray strip along the bottom of the call window. It is at the right end of the bar on the desktop apps and at the far right on the guest web app.
On the host side, close the Room and open it again. In your open room, click the red Leave Room button at the right end of the controls bar, or click Close Room, the red-tinted button at the bottom of the My room card on the home screen. Then click Open my room, the same button, when it turns blue again.
On the guest side, click Join again on the next screen, or refresh the browser page and join again, or quit and reopen the Nearo app. Guests wait until the host admits them again.
If it is still not right, restart the computer, then rejoin.
💡 If the session is happening right now and you cannot stop to troubleshoot, turn on Data Saver (click the three dots at the right end of the controls bar) or turn off video with Stop Video, the Camera button next to Mic, for the rest of the lesson. Audio uses far less of your connection than video, so the session is more likely to stay connected.
Work out which side the problem is on
If you see the other person freeze, stutter, or sound robotic, but they say you look and sound fine, the problem is most likely on their side.
If the other person says you are freezing or breaking up, but they look fine to you, the problem is most likely on your side.
If both of you see problems, start with whichever side has the weaker connection or the older computer, then check the other.
Look at the small signal icon in the top left corner of your own video tile. As the host in the Nearo desktop app, you see it on both tiles, yours and your student's. A student sees it on their own tile only. It is faint when that connection is good and amber when it is unstable. Point at it to see "Connection good" or "Connection unstable".
When a connection is unstable, a one-line message appears at the top center of the call, above the video tiles, and goes away by itself. When a notebook or a shared screen is open, the message floats at the top center of the notebook or shared screen instead, so the video tiles do not move. You see "Your connection is unstable." about your own connection. The tutor also sees "[Name]'s connection is unstable." about the student's, or "The connection is unstable." when both sides have a problem. A student only ever sees their own signal.
If you see Reconnecting… at the top center of the call window (over the video in a browser), or the other person disappears for a few seconds and comes back, the connection is dropping, not just slowing down. Pay special attention to jitter and packet loss in the speed test below.
The quickest way to compare both sides is for each person to run the Nearo connection check and the speed test, described next, and share the results.
Check your internet connection
These checks tell you whether your network lets Nearo through, whether your connection is fast and steady enough, and whether your Wi-Fi is the weak point.
Run the Nearo connection check
Open the Nearo connection check in a web browser on the computer or device you use for sessions.
The check starts on its own and takes about ten seconds. Click Run again to repeat it.
The check reports on your Internet connection, a Direct connection to Nearo, and a Backup connection via Nearo.
If the result says All clear, your network is not blocking Nearo, and you can move on to speed and stability.
If it says your network is blocking video calls, or that Nearo could not be reached at all, a firewall, VPN, or network filter is the likely cause. Try a different network, such as a phone hotspot, and see Which ports and permissions does Nearo require? if you are on a school or workplace network.
If it says direct calls work but the backup path is blocked, or that calls will work through the backup path, Nearo should still connect. If you still have problems, try a different network, such as a phone hotspot.
Click Copy result to send the result to the other person or to your IT administrator.
Test your internet speed and how steady it is
Nearo needs at least 5 Mbps download and 5 Mbps upload for a reliable session, but speed alone is not enough. A connection can be fast on average and still drop out for a second or two at a time, which causes freezes and disconnects. One test checks both.
Close other apps and pause any downloads or syncing so the test measures what Nearo would actually get.
Open the Cloudflare Speed Test in a browser and click Start. The test takes about a minute.
When it finishes, look at Download, Upload, Latency, Jitter, and Packet Loss, and at the Video Calls rating under Network Quality Score.
Run it again a few minutes later, and once more at the time of day your sessions usually happen. Very different numbers each time mean the connection is unstable, even if one result looks fine.
How to read the result:
Download and upload both at 5 Mbps or more: your speed is fine. If you still have problems, look at the next three numbers.
Either number under 5 Mbps: the connection is too slow for smooth video. Follow the fixes in the next section, and turn off video during sessions in the meantime.
Latency above about 150 milliseconds: everything you say and do arrives late on the other side, so conversation feels awkward and the shared screen lags behind you.
Jitter above about 30 milliseconds: the connection is uneven, which shows up as robotic audio and video that stutters even when the speed looks good.
Packet loss above 1 percent: parts of the audio and video are going missing, which causes freezes, dropped words, and disconnects.
A Video Calls rating of Poor or Bad points to the same problems, even if the individual numbers look acceptable.
Good numbers on Ethernet but poor numbers on Wi-Fi mean the problem is your Wi-Fi, not your internet provider.
ℹ️ A speed test measures your connection to the internet. Nearo also depends on the connection between the two of you, so a good result on one side does not rule out a problem on the other.
See how strong your Wi-Fi signal is
A weak or crowded Wi-Fi signal is the most common cause of an unstable connection, even when the internet plan is fast.
On Windows:
Open Settings, select Network & internet, then select Wi-Fi, and select the properties of the network you are connected to.
Look at Link speed (Receive/Transmit) and Network band. A link speed well below 100 Mbps, or a network band of 2.4 GHz when 5 GHz is available, usually means you are too far from the router or on a crowded channel.
On a Mac:
Hold down the Option key and click the Wi-Fi icon in the menu bar.
Look at RSSI, Noise, and Tx Rate. RSSI is your signal strength: 0 to about -60 is strong, -60 to -70 is usable, and below -70 is weak and will cause dropouts.
Tx Rate is your current connection speed to the router. If it is far below your internet plan's speed, Wi-Fi is the bottleneck.
Fix a slow or unstable connection
Work through these in order. The most reliable fix, a wired connection, is last because it takes the most setup.
Improve your Wi-Fi
Move the computer closer to the router, with as few walls between them as possible.
If your router offers both a 2.4 GHz and a 5 GHz network, connect to the 5 GHz one. It is faster and less crowded, though it does not reach as far.
Keep the computer away from microwaves, cordless phones, baby monitors, and other Wi-Fi routers, which all interfere with the signal.
Forget the network and join it again if the connection has become unreliable. On Windows, open Settings, select Network & internet, select Wi-Fi, select Manage known networks, and select Forget next to the network. On a Mac, open System Settings, select Wi-Fi, click Details… next to the network, and click Forget This Network….
If the router is far from where you teach, a mesh Wi-Fi system or a Wi-Fi extender placed halfway between the router and your desk can make a large difference.
Reduce the load on your connection
Ask other people in the home to pause video streaming, online gaming, video calls, and large downloads during the session, and disconnect devices that do not need to be online, such as smart TVs or a second laptop.
Pause cloud backups and file syncing on your own computer, such as OneDrive, iCloud Drive, Google Drive, and Dropbox. They can quietly use all of your upload speed.
Pause automatic updates for games and app stores while you teach.
Turn off your VPN for the session unless your school or organization requires it. A VPN sends all of your traffic through another server before it reaches Nearo, which adds delay and often blocks the direct connection. If it is required, ask your IT administrator to allow Nearo through it.
Restart your router and modem
Routers that have been running for weeks often slow down or drop connections.
Unplug both the modem and the router from power, and wait at least 30 seconds.
Plug the modem in first and wait until its lights settle, usually a minute or two. Then plug the router back in and wait for its lights to settle.
Reconnect and run the speed test again to confirm it helped.
Use a wired connection
A cable removes Wi-Fi from the picture entirely and is the single most effective fix for an unstable connection.
Connect an Ethernet cable from the router to your computer. Most desktop computers have an Ethernet port. Many laptops do not, but an inexpensive USB or USB-C to Ethernet adapter works with any of them.
Turn Wi-Fi off while the cable is connected so the computer does not switch back and forth.
Run the speed test again. On a wired connection, jitter and packet loss should be close to zero.
Check whether your computer is overloaded
Live video, audio, and screen sharing all run at the same time in Nearo, and an older or busy computer can fall behind. When it does, video freezes, audio breaks up, and the shared screen lags, even on a fast connection. These tools show you what your computer is doing.
On Windows
Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager.
Select Performance on the left. Watch the CPU, Memory, and Disk graphs for a minute while Nearo is running. CPU staying above about 80 percent, Memory above about 85 percent, or Disk sitting at 100 percent all mean the computer is overloaded.
Select Processes on the left, then click the CPU or Memory column heading to sort by it. The apps at the top are using the most.
Select an app you do not need for the lesson and click End task.
🔔 Do not end tasks you do not recognize. Windows system processes are normal, and ending one can make the computer unstable. Only close apps you opened yourself.
On a Mac
Press Command + Space, type Activity Monitor, and press Return.
Select the CPU tab and click the % CPU column heading so the busiest apps are at the top. If Idle at the bottom is below about 20 percent while Nearo is running, the processor is overloaded.
Select the Memory tab and look at the Memory Pressure graph at the bottom. Green means the Mac has enough memory. Yellow means it is running short. Red means it needs more memory than it has, and Nearo will struggle.
To close an app that is using a lot, select it, click the Stop button in the toolbar, and click Quit. If the app is not responding, click Force Quit.
ℹ️ In Safari, each open tab appears in Activity Monitor as a separate Safari Web Content process. If several of them are near the top of the CPU list, closing tabs is the fix.
On a Chromebook
Open the Launcher, type Diagnostics, and open the Diagnostics app. It shows current CPU and memory use and can run a connectivity test.
To see which apps and tabs are using the most, press Search + Esc to open the Task Manager, sort by CPU or Memory, select anything you do not need, and click End process.
On an iPad
The iPad does not show its own resource use, but the signs of an overloaded iPad are the same: the picture freezes, audio stutters, the iPad feels warm, and switching between apps is slow.
Close apps you are not using. Swipe up from the bottom edge of the screen and pause in the middle to see your open apps, then swipe each one up and off the top of the screen.
Close extra Safari tabs. Tap the Tabs button, touch and hold Done, and tap Close All Tabs.
Restart the iPad if it has been on for a long time.
Reduce the load on your computer
Once you know the computer is overloaded, these changes free it up. Start with the easy ones.
Close what you are not using
Quit every app that is not part of the lesson. Closing an app's window is not always the same as quitting it. On a Mac, press Command + Q in the app, or check the Dock for apps with a dot under them and quit those.
Close browser tabs you do not need. Each tab uses memory, and some, such as video sites, social media, and web-based email, keep working in the background even when you are not looking at them.
In Chrome or Microsoft Edge, press Shift + Esc to open the browser's own task manager and see which tabs and extensions use the most. On a Mac, in Chrome, open the Window menu and select Task Manager. Select a tab you do not need and click End process.
Turn off browser extensions you do not need for teaching. Ad blockers, grammar checkers, and screen recorders all use processing power on every page.
If you keep many tabs for lessons, use a bookmark folder instead and open only the ones you need for the current session.
Pause background work
Pause cloud syncing and backups such as OneDrive, iCloud Drive, Google Drive, Dropbox, and Time Machine during sessions. The sync app's icon in the taskbar or menu bar usually has a Pause option.
Let antivirus scans and system updates finish before the session, or schedule them for a time you are not teaching. A scan or an update downloading in the background can slow the whole computer down.
Quit apps that use the camera or microphone, such as Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, or a webcam utility. Two apps competing for the camera cause freezes and dropped video.
Close video editors, games, and design apps, which use a lot of memory even when idle.
Stop apps from starting automatically
Apps that open themselves when the computer starts stay running all day and use memory whether or not you notice them.
On Windows:
Open Task Manager with Ctrl + Shift + Esc and select Startup apps on the left.
Use the Startup impact column to find the apps that slow the computer down most, select any you do not need every day, and click Disable. This does not uninstall the app. You can still open it when you want it.
On a Mac:
Open System Settings, select General, then select Login Items & Extensions.
Under Open at Login, select any app you do not need every day and click the minus button.
Under Allow in the Background, turn off anything you do not recognize as important.
Restart properly
Restart the computer before a day of sessions if it has been on for more than a few days. A restart clears memory that apps have used and not given back.
On Windows, choose Restart rather than Shut down. With the default settings, Shut down saves part of the system to disk and reloads it next time, so it does not clear everything. Restart does.
On a Mac, choose Restart… from the Apple menu. Uncheck Reopen windows when logging back in so the same apps do not all open again.
Check your power and performance settings
Laptops slow themselves down to save battery, and video calls are one of the first things to suffer. Plug the laptop into power before every session. On battery, both Windows and macOS reduce performance, and some laptops cut it sharply once the battery drops below 20 percent.
On Windows
Open Settings, select System, then select Power & battery.
Under Power mode, select Best performance, or at least Balanced. Best power efficiency limits the processor and can cause choppy video.
Make sure Energy saver is turned off while you teach. On older versions of Windows this is called Battery saver.
If you cannot change the power mode, a custom power plan is selected. Open Control Panel, select System and Security, select Power Options, and choose Balanced.
On a Mac
Open System Settings and select Battery on a laptop, or Energy on a desktop.
Set Low Power Mode to Never, or at most Only on Battery. Low Power Mode reduces the processor's speed, which makes video calls stutter.
On Macs that offer an Energy Mode setting instead, choose Automatic or High Power for the power adapter and avoid Low Power while teaching.
On an iPad
Open Settings and select Battery.
Turn off Low Power Mode before a session, and keep the iPad plugged in if the battery is low.
In your browser
These settings apply to guests joining from a browser and to anyone using a browser for teaching materials alongside Nearo.
In Chrome, open the menu, select Settings, and select Performance. Memory Saver puts unused tabs to sleep, which helps on a computer with limited memory. Add the Nearo Room address to the list of sites to keep active so it is never put to sleep.
In the same place, Energy Saver reduces video quality when the laptop is on battery. Turn it off, or keep the laptop plugged in.
Open Settings, select System, and make sure Use graphics acceleration when available is turned on. Without it, the processor does work the graphics chip should do, and video becomes choppy.
Keep the browser updated. Chrome, Edge, and Safari all improve video performance with updates.
Keep the computer cool
A laptop that gets hot slows itself down to protect itself. This is common during long sessions with video and screen sharing.
Use the laptop on a hard, flat surface, not on a bed, couch, or lap where the vents are covered, and keep the vents clear of dust.
If the fan is loud and the computer is slow, close other apps and give it a few minutes to cool down before continuing.
Make sure the computer meets Nearo's requirements
If the computer is overloaded even with nothing else running, it may simply be below what Nearo needs.
See What are the system requirements to use Nearo? for the current requirements and for how to check your processor and memory.
Nearo works best with 8 GB of memory or more. A computer with 4 GB can run a session, but only with nothing else open, and the browser or app may still stall.
Make sure the operating system is up to date. On Windows, open Settings and select Windows Update. On a Mac, open System Settings, select General, then Software Update. On an iPad, open Settings, select General, then Software Update. On a Chromebook, open Settings, select About ChromeOS, and select Check for updates.
Check that the disk is not nearly full. A computer with less than about 10 percent free space slows down noticeably. On Windows, open Settings, select System, then Storage. On a Mac, open System Settings, select General, then Storage. On an iPad, open Settings, select General, then iPad Storage.
Keep the Nearo app updated.
Adjust the session itself
If the connection or the computer is at its limit and you cannot change it today, these changes reduce how much Nearo asks of it.
Turn on Data Saver on the side that is struggling. Click the three dots at the right end of the controls bar, next to the red End Call button, and select Data Saver (in the Nearo desktop app it is under Calls). In the small floating window, the three dots (Options) are at the right of its top row. It lowers camera quality and uses lighter audio. If the other person has Data Saver on, the camera and microphone you send them are lowered too.
Turn off video on the side that is struggling, or on both sides, by clicking Stop Video, the Camera button next to Mic in the controls bar. In the floating window, the button reads Turn off camera. Audio and screen sharing continue to work, and turning video off frees up both connection and processing power.
Stop sharing your screen when you do not need it, and start again when you do. In the Nearo desktop app, click Share Screen, the monitor button in the controls bar. Its hover text reads Stop Sharing while you share. While you share, the call is in the small floating window, where the button is in the row of buttons under the video tiles. Screen sharing can use as much of your connection as video does.
When you share your screen, close or minimize windows that are not part of the lesson, especially ones with animation or video, so there is less on the screen to send.
If you are showing a video to your student, consider sending them the link to watch on their own device instead of playing it in a shared screen.
ℹ️ Nearo also lowers camera quality on its own when the connection is weak, and raises it again once the connection recovers.
Narrow it down with a different computer or network
If you have tried everything above and are still not sure where the problem is, swap one thing at a time.
Test on a different network first, because it is the quickest swap. Connect the same computer to your phone's personal hotspot, or try another location such as a library or a family member's home, and join a session. If Nearo works well there, the problem is your home network or internet provider. Give your provider the speed test results, and mention the times of day the problem happens.
Then test on a different computer on the same network. Borrow a family member's laptop, or use a school computer. If the problem goes away, the original computer is the cause.
Ask the other person to do the same swaps on their side. If the problem follows one computer or one network wherever it goes, you have found it.
Schedule a short test session with your student before the next lesson, with both of you plugged in, on the best connection available, with nothing else open. If that session is smooth, compare it to your normal setup one change at a time until you find what makes the difference.
Report a problem with the call
Use this if a call was poor and you want Nearo to look at it.
During the call, click the three dots at the right end of the controls bar, next to the red End Call button, and press Report a problem, the last row of the menu.
After a call ends, press Report a problem instead. On the web it is a small underlined button under Join again. In the Nearo desktop app it is a button on the end-of-call message ("Call ended" for a student, "[Name] left the call" for the tutor), and it stays for about 20 seconds.
The row shows "Sending…" and then "Sent to Nearo Support. Thank you." If you see "We couldn't send that. Please try again.", press it again.
When you press Report a problem, Nearo also includes the last few minutes of the call, so you can press it right after the problem happens.