The Bandwidth Drain
Modern websites are heavily visual, often loading dozens of high-resolution images, banners, and background graphics the moment you navigate to a URL. By default, Google Chrome automatically downloads and renders every single image on a webpage. While this provides the intended rich media experience, it is disastrous if you are browsing the internet on a strictly metered cellular connection, a slow satellite link, or a costly international roaming data plan. Automatically downloading megabytes of unwanted images on a news article when you only want to read the text will rapidly consume your data allowance and severely slow down page loading times.
Blocking Image Loading via Site Settings
To conserve your bandwidth and stop Google Chrome from automatically downloading and displaying images on websites, you must change the global content permissions to block image rendering entirely.
Open Google Chrome. Click the three vertical dots in the top-right corner of the window and select Settings from the dropdown menu. In the left-hand navigation pane, click on Privacy and security. In the main window, click on Site Settings. Scroll down the page until you find the Content section. Click on the option labeled Images. At the top of this menu, you will see a setting governing the default behavior. Change the selection from “Sites can show images” to the radio button for Don’t allow sites to show images. The change is immediate. When you browse the web, pages will load incredibly fast, displaying only text and structural layout boxes where the images should be. If you desperately need to see a specific image, you can right-click the broken image icon and select “Load image.”