Google Chrome will lazy load videos and audio to speed up web pages

Google is preparing a new feature for Chrome 148 that will help improve the loading of a web page by delaying the loading of video and audio elements instead of loading them all at the same time.

lazy loading is a feature present since 2019 in Chromium-based browsers that allows you to delay the loading of images and ‘iframes’ – embedded HTML elements – so that instead of them being available from the moment the web page is accessed, they are loaded as the user navigates through it.

This feature speeds up the loading of the web page. For this reason, Google now intends to take it to uploading videos and audio elementsas stated on the Chrome Platform Status page.

This feature will be implemented natively in Chrome 148, which will prevent developers from having to implement third-party solutions for the browser to detect the loading of multimedia elements.

According to the company, “native lazy loading allows the browser to optimize the loading of resources with thresholds that take network into account, correctly handle interaction with autoplay and preload attributesy avoid blocking window.onload for off-screen media.”