Your browser is about to get a lot faster. Google is testing a major change in Chrome 148 that stops your browser from loading videos and audio you may never even scroll to. Chrome 148 is currently in development and is expected to roll out in mid-April.1 If you have ever felt a webpage crawl to a load because of all the media packed into it, this update is built for you.
What Is Lazy Loading and Why Does It Matter
Think about the last time you opened a news article and watched the page freeze for a few seconds before anything became clickable. Right now, Chrome loads everything on a page at once, whether you are going to scroll down to it or not. That is changing.2
Lazy loading is the fix. It is a feature that delays the loading of non-critical, off-screen resources until they are actually needed.1 In simple words, your browser waits. It loads only what is in front of your eyes first, and fetches the rest as you scroll closer to it.
Chrome and Chromium-based browsers have had built-in lazy loading support for images and iframes since 2019.3 That was a solid step forward. But video and audio content sitting further down the page was still being loaded the moment you opened a page, eating up your bandwidth and slowing everything down.
Chrome 148 finally closes that gap.
Google Chrome 148 lazy loading video audio performance update
The Big Change Coming in Chrome 148
With Chrome 148, Google is extending this feature to include audio and video elements. This means media files that are not immediately visible on the screen will not load until the user scrolls to them.4
Think of a recipe site with six embedded cooking videos below the fold. Under current browser behavior, Chrome fetches all six poster thumbnails and begins initializing each video on page load, whether the user scrolls that far or not. Those fetches pile up early, before a single recipe step has been read. Lazy loading cuts them entirely until they are needed.5
This is the kind of behind-the-scenes change that the average user never reads about but feels every single day. Pages snap to life faster. Data stops being wasted in the background.
Here is what improves once the update rolls out:
- Faster initial page loads, especially on media-heavy websites
- Lower data usage, since the browser skips unnecessary downloads
- Better performance on lower-end devices, where multiple media assets slow rendering
- Smarter, network-aware loading, because the feature plugs directly into the browser’s built-in preload scanner
The native implementation brings several immediate improvements. Pages load faster because browsers skip unnecessary media downloads during initial load. Bandwidth usage drops, especially on content-heavy websites filled with embedded media. Performance also improves on lower-end devices, where handling multiple media assets can slow down rendering. Since the feature integrates directly with the browser’s preload scanner, it allows smarter, network-aware decisions.6
The Developer Behind This Change
This upgrade did not come from inside Google’s walls. This change was proposed by Helmut Januschka, an independent developer known for his past contributions to Chromium.7
The implementation was merged into Chromium on February 20, 2026, and entered the shipping process at the end of March.5
Before this update, web developers who wanted lazy loading for videos had to write custom JavaScript code to get it working. Most sites already lazy load videos or audio using JavaScript, which works well, but it is not the best practice for performance, as it does not integrate well with the browser’s native preload scanner and built-in loading heuristics. “Without native support, developers must implement custom JavaScript solutions using Intersection Observer to detect when media elements enter the viewport and then dynamically set the src attribute,” wrote Januschka in a post on Chrome status.7
Until now, developers relied on JavaScript solutions like Intersection Observer to achieve this behavior. That approach often added complexity and failed to integrate cleanly with browser-level optimizations. With this update, developers can simply use a native HTML attribute: loading=”lazy” on video and audio elements.6
For developers, this means one simple HTML attribute replaces an entire layer of fragile JavaScript code.
Who Gets This Update and What to Expect
The feature will be on by default for all users across desktop, Android, and iOS, so there is nothing to configure.2 You will not need to toggle a setting or install anything extra. It just works.
However, users may not notice changes on platforms like YouTube, since embedded videos already rely on iframe-based lazy loading.4 So your YouTube experience stays exactly the same.
This update targets video and audio elements that sit directly in a page’s code, which is common on news sites, blogs, and media-heavy articles.2 Those are precisely the types of pages where users feel the sluggishness the most.
The good news extends well beyond Chrome users. The change also extends to other Chromium-based browsers. Edge, Vivaldi, and Brave will all pick this up automatically since they share the same underlying engine.2
One honest caveat worth noting here:
The feature only helps on pages where developers explicitly add the attribute. Chrome will not retroactively apply lazy loading to existing video and audio across the web. Users browsing sites that have not adopted it will notice no difference.5
That means the full benefit of this change will grow gradually as more websites and developers adopt the new HTML attribute. Early-adopter sites, especially modern news platforms and media blogs, will be the first places you feel the speed difference.
The WHATWG standards thread has received positive signals from Gecko, WebKit, and Chromium, with at least one reviewer describing the spec as ready for final standardization.5 That is a promising sign this will become a web-wide standard and not just a Chrome-specific tweak.
As of this week, Firefox’s implementation is in active review and WebKit’s is prepared but not formally submitted.5 So the rest of the browser world is watching and moving in the same direction.
Google has been on an aggressive performance push for Chrome lately, and this update fits that exact pattern. A faster browser means less frustration, less wasted data, and a web that simply feels better to use. Whether you are on a flagship phone or an older laptop with a slow connection, Chrome 148 is being built with you in mind. When mid-April rolls around, the pages you visit every morning might just feel a little lighter, a little quicker, and a whole lot more enjoyable to browse. What do you think about Chrome’s new lazy loading update? Drop your thoughts in the comments below.
