Why?
There are multiple reasons and multiple factors involved.
There are a few key reasons behind this change, all of which are aimed at making your experience with Lighthouse even better. First off, Google has been introducing more and more metrics, such as the Input Delay (INP). While these metrics are meant to help, they can actually make it harder to track and understand what’s truly valuable. So, I’ve decided to simplify things by focusing on the essential metrics that have proven to be reliable and actionable.
Another benefit of removing the Core Web Vitals and CrUX features is that you’ll no longer need to rely on external resources like the Lighthouse API or have a Google Developer Console account with an associated Lighthouse API key. Instead, I will implement a better approach using the JavaScript Performance API, which allows me to provide performance tracking without any additional hassles for you.
The Performance API is a group of standards used to measure the performance of web applications.
To ensure web applications are fast, it’s important to measure and analyze various performance metrics. The Performance API provides important built-in metrics and the ability to add your own measurements to the browser’s performance timeline. The performance timeline contains high precision timestamps and can be displayed in developer tools. You can also send its data to analytics end points to record performance metrics over time.
MDN
By removing these features, I’m also ensuring that performance tracking is enabled by default within the plugin. You won’t have to worry about setting up or configuring any API keys – it’s all taken care of for you, out of the box. Plus, I’ve narrowed down the number of metrics you need to track from 6 (Core Web Vitals) to just 3, so you can focus on the essential aspects of your website’s performance.
Lastly, I want to highlight that you can still access Google’s Core Web Vitals through platforms like Google Search Console and the native Chrome Lighthouse audit. These tools already offer comprehensive functionality for analyzing Core Web Vitals, so duplicating those features within my plugin would be redundant. Instead, I encourage you to leverage those existing resources alongside the Lighthouse plugin for a seamless and efficient performance analysis.
