Optimizing Font Loading for Web Performance
Jul 18, 2025 am 03:55 AMWeb page loading speed can be improved by optimizing font loading. 1. Use font-display: swap, allowing the system font to be displayed first and then replaced with custom fonts to avoid blank text; 2. Preload the first-screen keyword fonts through <link rel="preload"> to shorten the loading delay; 3. Reduce the number of font variants and formats, only load the necessary font weights and give priority to the use of woff2 format; 4. In response to the problem of excessive Chinese fonts, you can load the character set as needed or use system font alternatives to improve the first drawing time and reading experience.
Web page loading speed is crucial to both user experience and SEO, and font loading is an often overlooked link that affects performance. Optimizing font loading can effectively reduce page blocking time and make content rendered faster.

Control font rendering behavior using font-display
The browser will hide text by default until the font is loaded, which may cause the user to see white screen or blank text. By setting font-display: swap
, the browser can first display text in system fonts, and then replace it after the custom font is loaded.
For example:

@font-face { font-family: 'Roboto'; src: url('roboto.woff2') format('woff2'); font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-display: swap; }
Commonly used values include:
-
swap
: Show alternate fonts immediately, and replace them after loading -
fallback
: Allow alternate fonts for a short time, otherwise hide them -
block
: Display alternate fonts after a short delay (not recommended)
It is recommended that most websites use swap
, which not only ensures readability but also improves perception speed.

Preload keyword files
The browser will not start downloading the font file before parsing the CSS, which may cause delays in font loading. Keywords can be loaded in advance via <link rel="preload">
:
<link rel="preload" href="roboto.woff2" as="font" type="font/woff2" crossorigin>
This method is especially suitable for fonts used on the first screen. Be careful to add crossorigin
attribute to avoid cross-domain problems that make the font unusable.
Although preloading is effective, it should also be used in moderation. Only preload the fonts required on the first screen to avoid adding unnecessary requests.
Reduce the number of font variants and formats
Many developers like to introduce multiple font variants (such as bold, italic, and different word weights), but each additional variant has an extra request. suggestion:
- Load only the font variants you really need
- Try to use
woff2
format, it has high compression rate and good compatibility - If using Google Fonts, you can manually select the required word weight instead of introducing all
For example, if you only use the normal weight of Roboto, you don't need to load an additional 700 or italic version. This not only reduces the number of requests, but also reduces the total resource volume.
In addition, some Chinese font files are larger, and you can also consider loading some character sets (subsets) on demand, or using system fonts as an alternative.
Basically that's it. Font optimization is not as intuitive as pictures, but doing it right can significantly improve the first drawing time and user reading experience.
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