Last Updated on April 26, 2022

Web Vitals are quality signals key to delivering great UX on the web (https://web.dev/vitals). 

 

The web vitals Chrome extension measures the Core Web Vitals, providing instant feedback on loading, interactivity and layout shift metrics. It is consistent with how these metrics are measured by Chrome and reported to other Google tools (e.g. Chrome User Experience Report, Page Speed Insights, Search Console).

 

Step 1: Install the Chrome extension

 

Step 2: Open a site and click on the extension

 

You will see that the extension provides three core features:

1) Ambient Badge – This helps check if a page passing the Core Web Vitals thresholds.

Once installed, the extension will display a disabled state badge icon until you navigate to a URL. At this point it will update the badge to green or red depending on whether the URL passes the Core Web Vitals metrics thresholds.

 

The badge has a number of states:

 

* Disabled – gray

* Passing – green

* One or more metrics failing – red

 

If one or more metrics are failing, the badge will animate the values of these metrics.

 

2) Detailed drill-down in the popup

 

The extension captures:

Largest Contentful Paint

Cumulative Layout Shift

First Input Delay

 

Clicking the Ambient badge icon will allow you to drill in to the individual metric values. In this mode, the extension will also say if a metric value might change or requires a user action.

 

For example, First Input Delay requires a real interaction (e.g click/tap) with the page and will be in a waiting for input state until this is the case. We recommend consulting the web.dev documentation for LCP, CLS and FID to get an understanding of when metric values settle.

 

3) HUD Overlay

 

The overlay displays a Heads up display (HUD) which overlays your page. It is useful if you need a persistent view of your Core Web Vitals metrics during development. To enable the overlay:

 

Right-click on the Ambient badge and go to Options.

Check Display HUD overlay and click ‘Save’

Reload the tab for the URL you wish to test. The overlay should now be present.