TLDR Web Dev · ARTICLES & TUTORIALS

RESOURCE PREFETCHING MAY SLOW DOWN YOUR WEBSITE

debugbear.com5 min read

Summary from the TLDR Web Dev newsletter

While prefetching is supposed to improve website performance by loading resources in advance, it can sometimes worsen loading speed by competing with critical content for bandwidth. Despite being assigned the lowest priority, prefetch requests may initiate too early, delaying the loading of important elements like the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). To prevent this, you can inject prefetch hints via JavaScript after the initial page load to make sure essential content loads first.