The Jumpy Webpage
Google Chrome aims to load webpages as fast as possible. Because text loads instantly while large images and advertisements take longer, you often start reading an article before the page is fully rendered. A major problem occurs when a massive image finally loads above the text you are reading; the sudden influx of pixels physically pushes all the text down, causing you to lose your place. To combat this, Chrome introduced “Scroll Anchoring.” This feature attempts to lock the text you are currently reading in place, mathematically adjusting the scroll position as images load above it. However, on poorly coded websites, Scroll Anchoring frequently misfires, causing the page to violently jump up and down as Chrome struggles to calculate the anchor point.
Disabling the Anchor
To stop the erratic page jumping on unstable websites and disable the Scroll Anchoring feature completely in Google Chrome, you must modify the browser’s internal experimental flags.
Because Scroll Anchoring is a core rendering behavior, there is no standard settings toggle. Open a new tab in Google Chrome. Click into the address bar at the top, type exactly chrome://flags, and press Enter. This opens the internal experiments page. In the search box at the very top, type Scroll Anchor. The list will filter down to a flag explicitly named Scroll Anchoring. Click the dropdown menu located to the right of this flag (which will be set to “Default”) and change it to Disabled. A blue button labelled Relaunch will appear in the bottom right corner of the window. Click it to restart the browser. Chrome will no longer attempt to dynamically adjust your scroll position as elements load.