What is the Prediction Service?
Google Chrome includes a setting called “Preload pages for faster browsing and searching” (formerly known as “Use a prediction service to load pages more quickly”). When this is enabled, Chrome attempts to guess which links you are going to click next on a webpage. Before you even click, Chrome starts downloading the images and HTML of those predicted pages in the background.
While this makes the internet feel blazing fast because the next page loads instantly, it has massive downsides. It silently consumes a huge amount of your internet bandwidth by downloading pages you never actually visit, it drains laptop batteries faster, and it poses a privacy risk because you are technically “visiting” tracking servers on pages before you consent to do so. You can turn this aggressive preloading off.
How to Disable Page Preloading in Google Chrome
You can disable the prediction service deep within Chrome’s Performance settings.
- Open Google Chrome on your desktop.
- Click the More (three dots) icon in the top-right corner of the browser.
- Select Settings from the dropdown menu.
- In the left-hand sidebar, click on Performance.
- Scroll down the page until you find the section labelled Speed.
- Look for the toggle switch labelled Preload pages (or “Preload pages for faster browsing and searching”).
- Toggle the switch to the OFF (gray) position.
(Note: In older versions of Chrome, this setting was located under Privacy and Security > Cookies and other site data).
Once disabled, Chrome will only use your bandwidth and CPU power to load a webpage after you explicitly click the link.