Smart Image Loader is a fire-and-forget priority and lazy loader for image sources. Can be a huge performance boost especially for one pagers.
As of April 2026, Smart Image Loader is a WordPress image plugin with 100 active installations and a 5/5 rating from 2 reviews. It has been downloaded 9.3K+ times in total. Requires WordPress 3.8.3+ and PHP false+. Available on WordPress.org since 2014. Last updated 7 years ago — may have compatibility concerns. Top alternative: Firelight Lightbox.
Smart Image Loader loads images which are visible in the initial viewport of your website before any images whose position is “below the fold”, outside the current viewport. Those images can be loaded as soon as the visible images are finished loading or “lazy loaded” when they would become visible. This can be useful for bandwidth saving on mobile devices.
There is no need to insert any additional code into your website, just install the plug-in.
The default settings are fine in most cases, but you may want to adjust them for optimization.
Smart Image Loader is tested and works down to Internet Explorer 7, disabled below.
Note: there is currently no support for (CSS) background images.
| WordPress | 3.8.3+ requiredTested up to 4.9.29 |
| PHP | false+ required |
Plugin data sourced from WordPress.org. Analysis and metrics by PluginSift.