Lazy-loading images has been a commonly used mechanism to significantly improve pageload performance for several years. For the WordPress ecosystem alone, there are a myriad of plugins that enable lazy-loading.

While historically lazy-loading images has required a custom JavaScriptJavaScript JavaScript or JS is an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers. WordPress makes extensive use of JS for a better user experience. While PHP is executed on the server, JS executes within a user’s browser. https://www.javascript.com/.-based approach, there is now a native web solution which relies solely on the presence of a new loading attribute on img tags and provides a standardized user experience without content shifting. The HTML specification for the loading attribute is near completion and is already supported by several browsers, including Chrome and Edge.

Enabling lazy-loading for images in WordPress content was first proposed nearly two years ago, however the JavaScript implementation at the time would potentially have introduced many edge cases and failures. Using the new loading attribute removes these concerns. This post describes the suggested solution.

Performance Impact

According to HTTPArchive, images are the most requested asset type for most websites and usually take up more bandwidth than any other resource. At the 90th percentile, sites send about 4.7 MB of images on desktop and mobile. Native lazy-loading for the web, web.dev

Without lazy-loading, all images on a web page are loaded immediately. This can significantly harm performance, especially on pages that contain many images. If several of these images are “below the fold”, i.e. the part of the page that the user does not immediately see, loading those images right away is unnecessary and potentially even wasteful of networknetwork (versus site, blog) resources: If the user never scrolls towards those images, they would have been loaded regardless.

Since lazy-loading has become a must-have performance improvement, the new loading attribute specification aims to standardize the behavior and make it even faster, integrated in the web platform.

With WordPress enabling native lazy-loading by default, it would significantly impact performance and user experience for millions of sites, without requiring any technical knowledge or even awareness of lazy-loading as a concept. Adopting the new loading attribute is a great chance for WordPress to lead the way for a faster web overall.

Technical Solution

The loading attribute currently supports two possible values:

eager , to load an image immediately on pageload

, to load an image immediately on pageload lazy , to load an image only when it becomes relevant for the viewport

The implementation seeks to enable lazy-loading images by default, providing the loading attribute with value lazy on the following img tags:

Images in post content

Images in post excerpts

Images in comments

Images in text widget Widget A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user. content

content Individual images rendered via wp_get_attachment_image()

Avatar Avatar An avatar is an image or illustration that specifically refers to a character that represents an online user. It’s usually a square box that appears next to the user’s name. images rendered via get_avatar()

Note that loading="lazy" will only be added if the respective tagtag A directory in Subversion. WordPress uses tags to store a single snapshot of a version (3.6, 3.6.1, etc.), the common convention of tags in version control systems. (Not to be confused with post tags.) does not yet include a loading attribute. In other words, to prevent an image from being lazy-loaded, it is recommended to specify loading="eager" .

Customization for Developers

Note that the customization capabilities outlined below and how they work exactly is subject to change.

While the images outlined above will be lazy-loaded by default, developers will be able to override this behavior both globally and on a per-image basis.

A new filterFilter Filters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. wp_lazy_loading_enabled will allow turning the feature on and off. For example, one could disable lazy-loading entirely with the following snippet:

add_filter( 'wp_lazy_loading_enabled', '__return_false' );

This filter also passes a secondary parameter $tag_name , which is a specific tag name to enable or disable lazy-loading for, and $context , which typically is the name of the current filter being run. Currently, img is the only supported value, but since adding loading support to additional tags is on the horizon (e.g. some browsers already support the loading attribute on iframe tags), this parameter exists for future compatibility. For example, if you want to be more specific and disable lazy-loading only for images (so that future supported tags would by default have it enabled), you could use the following snippet:

add_filter( 'wp_lazy_loading_enabled', function( $result, $tag_name ) { if ( 'img' === $tag_name ) { return false; } return $result; }, 10, 2 );

In addition to this filter which allows customization across the entire site, there is another filter wp_set_image_loading_attr that filters the value of the loading attribute for individual control per image. The filter passes the full img tag markup including all attributes as second parameter, the full content blob that the image is part of, and the context, which typically is the current filter being run. wp_set_image_loading_attr can for example be used for interoperability by plugins that currently use alternative mechanisms to lazy-load, for example a class or a data attribute. It is recommended to only do this as a transition though, and in the long run update such plugins to specify loading="eager" , in which case coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. will leave that in place as is, as mentioned before.

Please see the inline documentation in the pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party for more detail on how to customize lazy-loading behavior.

Call for Testing

The proposed solution is available as a feature plugin WP Lazy Loading in the plugin repository. The plugin is being developed on GitHub. Your testing and feedback will be much appreciated. Particularly testing interoperability with various content creation mechanisms (e.g. blocks, shortcodes) and existing lazy-loading plugins would be helpful. The current goal is to get this feature released as part of WordPress 5.4, merging in the next two weeks.

Please share your ideas, questions and thoughts either in a comment on this post, in the plugin’s support forumSupport Forum WordPress Support Forums is a place to go for help and conversations around using WordPress. Also the place to go to report issues that are caused by errors with the WordPress code and implementations. https://en.forums.wordpress.com/. on wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/, or on the GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ repository.