HTMLIFrameElement: loading property

Value

A string providing a hint to the user agent as to how to best schedule the loading of the iframe. The possible values are:

eager

Load the iframe as soon as the element is processed. This is the default.

lazy

Load the iframe when the browser believes that it is likely to be need in the near future.

Usage notes

JavaScript must be enabled

Loading is only deferred when JavaScript is enabled, irrespective of the value of this property.

This is an anti-tracking measure, because if a user agent supported lazy loading when scripting is disabled, it would still be possible for a site to track a user's approximate scroll position throughout a session, by strategically placing iframes in a page's markup such that a server can track how many are requested and when.

Timing of the load event

The load event is fired when the document has been fully processed.

Lazily loaded iframes do not affect the timing of the load event even if the iframe is in the visual viewport and is therefore fetched on page load. All eagerly loaded iframes in the document must be fetched before the load event can fire.

Examples

The example below shows how you might define a lazy-loaded iframe and then append it to a <div> in the document. The frame would then only be loaded when the frame about to become visible.

// Define iframe with lazy loading
const iframe = document.createElement("iframe");
iframe.src = "https://example.com";
iframe.width = 320;
iframe.height = 240;
iframe.loading = "lazy";

// Add to div element with class named frameDiv
const frameDiv = document.querySelector("div.frameDiv");
frameDiv.appendChild(iframe);

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also

• The <iframe> element
• Learn: Web performance
• Lazy loading in the MDN web performance guide
• It's time to lazy-load offscreen iframes! on web.dev