Chromium Blog: April 2019

Chromium Blog

News and developments from the open source browser project

Since we introduced Data Saver in Chrome, we’ve reduced users’ data usage by up to 60 percent. But now, the feature is expanding to provide more benefits in addition to data savings. Pages will now load faster, in some cases considerably faster, and use less memory. This is why starting today, we will be renaming Data Saver to Lite mode.
Lite mode will continue to reduce data use by using Google servers to compress the pages you visit before downloading them. Using the NetworkInformation API, Lite mode tells web servers that you are interested in receiving a version of the site that uses less data if one is available.
Lite mode also helps improve page loads. If Chrome predicts that a page will take longer than 5 seconds for the first text or image to show on screen, it will load a Lite version of the page instead. Lite pages are highly optimized to load considerably faster. A whitepaper will be published in the coming months that will explain this in more detail.
And of course, Lite mode will continue to respect your privacy. When Chrome optimizes an HTTPS page, only the URL is shared with Google and other information such as cookies, login information, and personalized page content is not shared with Google. We never break secure connections between Chrome and a website.
Lite mode is available only on Chrome for Android. The Chrome Data Saver desktop extension will be deprecated in M74.
To enable Lite mode, select Settings > Lite mode and toggle the setting to On. If you already have Data Saver enabled, then Lite mode will automatically be enabled.