Chrome prefetching will make your browsing seem faster – even if it’s not
Can your online experience ever be fast enough? Probably not. And this is why Google is taking steps to speed up Chrome – or at least to make the browser feel as though it is faster.
The company is testing a method of loading pages in the background before they are needed so the experience of a page appearing is faster. Currently in testing is an optional feature called prefetching which works much as you might expect it to.
The idea is not a complicated one, nor is it one that is completely new or unique. Windows 11 uses various versions of prefetching to speed things up, as do Office apps. Indeed, prefetching is already used in web browsers to some extent, including in Chrome.
So, what is different this time?
As reported by Windows Report, there are two new flags that can be used in Chrome called BookmarkBarPrefetch and NewTabPagePrefetch.
The description for BookmarkBarPrefretch is:
If enabled, bookmarkbar can trigger prefetch – Mac, Windows, Linux, ChromeOS #prefetch-bookmarkbar-trigger
As for NewTabPrefetch, the description is fairly similar:
If enabled, NewTabPage can trigger prefetch – Mac, Windows, Linux, ChromeOS #prefetch-new-tab-page-trigger
This may sound like something you have tried before, and that is because Google has released a heavy-handed version of this in the past. While previous incarnations of this feature saw Chrome preloading pages in their entirety in the background – something which was obviously very resource intensive, and did nothing to shake off Chrome’s reputation of being a resource hog – a lighter approach is in place now.
This time around, Google has taken a different and slightly more sensible approach. Prefetching only pre-emptively downloads essential components of a page, leaving the rest until the last minute. This helps to strike the balance between perceived speed, and usage of system resources.
This is the sort of feature which will give a different experience for different users. Juts how much of a difference it makes – or feels as though it makes – will depend on the way in which you use the internet, the speed of your internet connection, and the types of sites that are involved.
Have you had a chance to try this out? Let us know what you make of it in the comments below.