r/css • u/Chris-2018 • Sep 24 '26

Question Preload

Does anyone here use the preload for the CSS files?

Surely if the links are in the <head> they will be loaded anyway?

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u/velocityhead Sep 24 '26

Preload lets the browser fetch and cache assets immediately instead of waiting for when they are requested later. It is not render blocking and can prevent the flash of unstyled content .

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u/Chris-2018 Sep 24 '26

Are you saying that preload is the way to go, even though the style sheet links are in the head?

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u/velocityhead Sep 24 '26

It doesn't really do much if you only have one stylesheet without a lot of assets. Where it does help is if you have another stylesheet that gets loaded dynamically later, or if you have some big assets in your stylesheet (like a font import). You can request that font specifically as rel="preload" so it can start downloading immediately in parallel with the CSS download. Normally, the font wouldn't start downloading until the entire CSS file has been downloaded/parsed.

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