Google has released Lighthouse 13 with insight-based diagnostics that replace several legacy audits, while keeping performance scoring unchanged. The update is available now via npm and Chrome Canary.
Availability and rollout
- Available now via npm and Chrome Canary.
- PageSpeed Insights update is expected within about a week.
- Chrome stable channel rollout is planned for version 143.
What changed
Lighthouse 13 consolidates many non-scored audits into new insight diagnostics, mirroring the insight model in Chrome DevTools for consistency. Scoring weights and performance calculations are not affected. Reports show fewer individual line items and more consolidated guidance, and some audit identifiers have changed.
Consolidated and renamed insights
- CLS and layout: layout-shifts is now cls-culprits-insight.
- Server and network: document-latency-insight consolidates related checks.
- Images: image-delivery-insight replaces audits for modern formats, optimized images, responsive images, and efficient animated content.
- LCP: lcp-discovery-insight and lcp-phases-insight surface Largest Contentful Paint issues.
- Interaction: interaction-to-next-paint-insight (INP) addresses interaction performance.
- Third-party: third-parties-insight replaces the prior third-party summary.
- Additional replacements cover DOM size and duplicated JavaScript.
- Further updates include font display, legacy JavaScript, and modern HTTPS.
- Other updates address network dependency trees, render-blocking, caching, and viewport configuration.
Removed audits
Google removed several audits deemed outdated, inactionable, or costly to run:
- first-meaningful-paint
- font-size
- offscreen-images
- preload-fonts
- uses-rel-preload
- no-document-write
- uses-passive-event-listeners
- third-party-facades
Non-composited-animations and unsized-images remain as separate diagnostics.
Note: font-size and preload-fonts were removed despite not appearing in the initial list.
What stays the same
The update targets non-scored diagnostics across the report. Metrics, thresholds, and overall performance scoring remain unchanged across versions.
Background
Lighthouse is Google's open-source tool for auditing web pages. It runs in Chrome DevTools and powers PageSpeed Insights reports. Chrome DevTools recently adopted an insight model for diagnostics, and Lighthouse 13 aligns with that approach to keep guidance consistent across tools.
Core Web Vitals context: Interaction to Next Paint replaced First Input Delay in March 2024, Cumulative Layout Shift measures unexpected layout movement during load, and Largest Contentful Paint tracks the render time of the largest content element.
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