Frontend & browser·Routing and navigation
hovering the link quietly fetched the next route's code and data before the click landed.
Route prefetching
Also calledlink prefetch, prefetch on hover
Fetching the code and often the data for a likely next route ahead of the navigation, triggered by the link entering the viewport or by hover intent. It is what makes framework navigation feel instantaneous. Prefetching every visible link on a dense page is a real bandwidth cost, and prefetched data can be stale by the time the user clicks, so it needs a freshness policy.