Google has announced that “on March 29th, 2022, with the release of Chrome M100 to the stable channel,” it will turn off Lite mode, a Chrome feature in Android phones that helps to save mobile data and load web pages more quickly. In essence, the Lite mode will not be included when the version 100 of the Chrome browser is released on March 29, with a beta arriving around March 3.
The Software company made this announcement in a blog post, stating that reducing data usage in its web browser was no longer necessary since the amount of mobile data has increased, while the cost of data was still the same.
When Google first released Lite mode (used to be called Data Saver) in 2014, mobile phone users were used to mobile plans with different amounts of data. If they went over, they could be charged extra costs. And in some places, mobile speeds were slow, so Lite mode made pages load faster by compressing them so they would load more quickly. In 2015, Google added the option to not show images at all, which will use even less data. It’s no longer uncommon to have unlimited internet plans, and the company claims that Chrome has continued to reduce data usage with its default settings.
“In recent years we’ve seen a decrease in cost for mobile data in many countries, and we’ve shipped many improvements to Chrome to further minimise data usage and improve web page loading,” Google noted in its blog post.
“Although Lite mode is going away, we remain committed to ensuring Chrome can deliver a fast webpage loading experience on mobile.”
All versions of Chrome will be affected, including mobile, desktop, and Chromebook.
However, since Data Saver is only available on Android versions, it won’t be something that many users will miss, especially since Android 12 already includes data saving capabilities for all apps, which can be found under Settings > Cellular Data.
