Google announced a new version of Lighthouse that contains numerous changes to how performance scores are calculated and how they are displayed.

The updated Lighthouse changes will begin appearing soon in PageSpeed Insights and shipping in DevTools of an upcoming Chrome release.

The new version rolls out with significant changes to the Performance category.

According to the changelog Lighthouse:

“This update includes an overhaul to the performance category.

 

Performance insights are now scored and prioritized based on their estimated impact to the performance metrics.

 

Additionally, the performance score gauge includes more detailed information about how each metric affects the score.”

Design Updates

One of the changes, which might not be noticed by most users, is to fix the alignment of the PageSpeed Insights gauges so that they line up correctly instead of the current random way.

Screenshot Of Off-Centered Gauges

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Screenshot Of Aligned Gauges

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New Explodey Gauge

There is also an updated interface for the performance category that’s humorously referred to as an “explodey guage” by the developers.

The new interface has a cleaner and more attractive look:

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There are many more updates to Lighthouse that are esoteric (yes, I used that word again!).

Don’t believe me about the esoteric thing?

Here’s what the changelog says about the Tests section:

 

• • use new headless for puppeteer tests (#15374)

 

• • dbw: increase wasted ms threshold (#15483)

 

• • devtools: remove usage of frontend globals (#15518)

 

• • devtools: ensure Lighthouse starts in smoke tests (#15459)

 

• • devtools: fix viewport in smoke tests (#15454)

 

• • devtools: sync e2e (#15444)

 

 

Overall, people might not notice many of the changes but they’re in there and it looks a lot nicer, even if it’s not overtly noticeable.

When Lighthouse 11.2.0 Rolls Out

Lighthouse 11.2.0 will show up in the Chrome Dev Tools in Chrome 120, which is currently schedule to be released on December 5, 2023.

PageSpeed Insights however will contain the changes a lot sooner, sometime by the end of this month, October.

Read the Lighthouse changelog here.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Asier Romero