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Free Plugin by beleaf v1.6.3

Lazy Embed

Improves the performance and reduces the emissions of your website by only loading embeds (youtube, vimeo, etc) when they are clicked.

Lazy Embed

The facts

Rating
5★ from 2
Active installs
100+
Price
Free
Last updated
22 May 2024
Added
Feb 2023
Requires WP
6.2.0
Tested up to
WP 6.5.10
Requires PHP
7.1
Downloads
3,293

Our analysis

AI-assisted

Lazy Embed is a WordPress plugin designed to improve webpage performance by deferring the loading of video resources until they are needed. This approach helps to reduce page transfer size and carbon emissions associated with loading videos. It works by modifying the iframe for video embeds, using a srcdoc attribute to display content only when the video is requested.

This plugin is suitable for website owners who frequently embed videos from platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, and Dailymotion and want to enhance their site's speed and sustainability.

Best for: Website owners who embed videos and seek to improve performance and sustainability.

What it does well

  • Defers loading of video resources until requested
  • Reduces page transfer size significantly
  • Supports YouTube, Vimeo, and Dailymotion

Where it falls short

  • Limited information on additional features
  • No user reviews provided beyond ratings

Verdict

Lazy Embed offers a straightforward solution for optimising video embeds, though details on its broader capabilities are limited.

From the developer

beleaf's own description of Lazy Embed, lightly tidied.

Videos are one of the largest assets that can be loaded on a webpage, and as such are one of the largest contributors to slow performance and high carbon emissions.

In fact, adding a Youtube embed to a page using the latest default WordPress theme, increased the page transfer size from 21 kb to 973 kb, and loaded an additional 27 resources. That’s an increase in transfer size of 4533%. Adding a Vimeo video increased the transfer from 21 kb to 276 kb, an increase in transfer size of 1214%, and loaded an additional 7 resources.

The Lazy Embed plugin defers the loading of any resource required for playing the video until the video is requested to be played. It does this by adding a srcdoc attribute to the iframe which shows in place of the normal iframe content.

Currently the following third parties are supported

  • Youtube
  • Vimeo
  • Dailymotion

Read the full description on the official page →

Tagged as

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