The Bandwidth and Distraction Drain
Modern websites are incredibly image-heavy. From massive background photos and product galleries to countless tiny ad banners and tracking pixels, a single web page can easily download several megabytes of image data before you can even begin reading the text. If you are browsing the internet on a strict data cap, using a very slow rural or mobile connection, or simply trying to read articles without visual distractions, Chrome’s default behavior of aggressively loading every image on the page can be a significant hindrance.
How to Disable Images Globally in Chrome
You can configure Google Chrome to operate in a text-only mode by blocking all websites from automatically displaying images.
1. Open Google Chrome and click the three vertical dots in the top-right corner.
2. Select Settings.
3. In the left-hand navigation sidebar, click on Privacy and security.
4. Click on Site settings.
5. Scroll down to the “Content” section and click on Images.
6. Under the “Default behavior” heading, change the selection from “Sites can show images” to Don’t allow sites to show images.
Once you select this option, Chrome will instantly stop downloading pictures. Web pages will load significantly faster, using a fraction of the data. Where images used to be, you will simply see empty space or the image’s descriptive “alt text.”
How to Allow Images on Specific Websites
Browsing a completely image-free internet can sometimes break the functionality of certain sites (like online stores or social media platforms). If you want to block images globally to save data but need them to load on a few trusted websites, you can create exceptions.
On that same “Images” settings page, scroll down to the Allowed to show images section. Click the Add button. Type the URL of the website you want to whitelist (for example, [*.]amazon.com) and click Add again. Chrome will now load images normally when you visit Amazon, but will continue to block them on every other website you visit.