Predictive Navigation loads the next page a visitor is likely to click before they click it, so the page appears almost instantly. It runs automatically on your WordPress site with no setup required.
Why it matters
Faster navigation keeps visitors moving through your site and reduces the friction that makes people leave. When a page is fully prepared before the click, Time to First Byte (TTFB), Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), and First Contentful Paint (FCP) on the next page drop to near zero.
How it works
Predictive Navigation uses the Speculation Rules API, a browser standard that lets a site tell the browser which pages to load in the background before the visitor clicks. There are two levels: prefetch, which downloads the next page's HTML in the background, and prerender, which fully builds the page in a hidden tab so it appears near-instantly on click. Prerender is faster but uses more of the visitor's device memory and processing power.
Instead of applying one generic rule to every link, Predictive Navigation uses your site's real traffic from the last 28 days. During optimization, it generates rules for each page based on where your visitors actually go next.
Pages are grouped into three tiers by confidence:
Immediate prerender: prerendered right away when the current page loads.
Hover prerender: prerendered when a visitor hovers over the link for a moment.
Prefetch on hover: downloads only the HTML, keeping device resources light.
Predictive Navigation is built on the Speculation Rules API, the browser standard that controls this behavior. WordPress 6.8 added a basic version of the same idea but it applies one conservative rule to every link. Predictive Navigation uses your traffic data and the faster prerender technique instead. Where NitroPack has enough data, its rules take priority. Where it doesn't, WordPress core's rules stay in place as the fallback, and pages NitroPack doesn't optimize (such as checkout) are left untouched.
How to enable it
Predictive Navigation is enabled by default for eligible plans and needs no configuration. Once NitroPack has enough traffic data for your site, it generates the rules automatically.
To disable it, go to NitroPack App > Cache Settings > Cache > Predictive Navigation and toggle it off.
NitroPack automatically skips pages where prerendering could cause problems such as cart and checkout pages. You don't need to configure exclusions for those.
For everything else, you can control prerendering per page:
Always prerender - use this for pages that matter to your funnel but don't get enough traffic to rank in NitroPack's model, such as a new product launch page or a seasonal offer.
Never prerender - use this for pages with personalized content, one-time offers, or anything that triggers an action when the page loads.
Things to know
Browser support: works in Chrome, Edge, and Opera. Safari and Firefox don't support the Speculation Rules API yet, so their visitors navigate normally with nothing broken.
Resource cost: because prerender fully builds a page in a hidden tab, it may occasionally prepare a page that a visitor never opens. This is more likely on sites with very diverse navigation, such as large catalogs.