Enable Lazy Image Loading in Microsoft Edge

Edge Stable Fluent Big 256 Icon

How to Enable Lazy Image Loading in Microsoft Edge Chromium

If you are using the newest Microsoft Edge browser, which is Chromium-based, you can enable an interesting feature that decreases the page loading time. It defers the loading of images until the page is scrolled down to them.

The feature is called 'Lazy Image Loading', and it is natively available in Microsoft Edge without installing extra add-ons.

Then lazy loading is enabled, the browser will prioritize the content visible to the user, while postponing the rendering process for images and frames that are not visible to the user. As of this writing, the same functionality can be utilized by webmasters with the help of JavaScript.

The HTML standard now includes the native markup for lazy image loading. The sample HTML code looks as follows:

<img loading="lazy" src="some image url" width="400" height="400" alt="Lazy loading sample">

The loading=lazy attribute was recently included to the HTML standard as a draft, so sooner or later it will be supported by all mainstream browsers.

Edge (and Chrome/Chromium) comes a number of useful options which are experimental. They are hidden behind options known as 'flags'. To unblock them, you need to turn on this or that flag.

To Enable Lazy Image Loading in Microsoft Edge,

  1. Open Microsoft Edge.
  2. Type the following in the address bar: edge://flags/#enable-lazy-image-loading
  3. Select Enabled from the drop-down menu next to the Lazy Image Loading line.
  4. Click on the restart button.
  5. From now, Edge will try to load images on demand which have the loading="lazy" attribute.
  6. Instead, you can set the flag to Enabled (Automatically lazily load where safe..) to make Edge lazily load images that doesn't include the loading="lazy" attribute.

You are done. This change must be notable on pages that contain plenty of images. The browser will prioritize the content visible to the user, while postponing the rendering process for images and frames that are not visible to the user.

Besides Edge, Chrome and Firefox also support the lazy image loading feature. Check this out:

Thanks to our reader 'Murat' for the tip.

Microsoft recently released the first stable version of Microsoft Edge Chromium to the public. Surprisingly, Microsoft Edge is still supporting a number of aging Windows versions, including Windows 7, which has recently reached its end of support. Check out Windows Versions Supported by Microsoft Edge Chromium.

Interested users can download MSI installers for deployment and customization.

For pre-release versions, Microsoft is currently using three channels to deliver updates to Edge Insiders. The Canary channel receives updates daily (except Saturday and Sunday), the Dev channel is getting updates weekly, and the Beta channel is updated every 6 weeks. Microsoft is going to support Edge Chromium on Windows 7, 8.1 and 10, alongside macOS, Linux (coming in the future) and mobile apps on iOS and Android.

Actual Edge versions

The actual versions of Edge Chromium at the moment of this writing are as follows:

You will find many Edge tricks and features covered in the following post:

Hands-on with the new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge

Also, see the following updates.

Support us

Winaero greatly relies on your support. You can help the site keep bringing you interesting and useful content and software by using these options:

If you like this article, please share it using the buttons below. It won't take a lot from you, but it will help us grow. Thanks for your support!

Author: Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

2 thoughts on “Enable Lazy Image Loading in Microsoft Edge”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Exit mobile version
Using Telegram? Subscribe to the blog channel!
Hello. Add your message here.