Find your LCP element in 4 clicks

Find your LCP element in 4 clicks
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint = when the biggest above-fold element renders) is often misidentified. The element you blame is rarely the one timed.

— Step 1: DevTools > Performance > record a reload, expand the LCP marker, click it. The node is named, not guessed.
— Step 2: Note its TTFB, load delay, load time, render delay sub-parts.
— Step 3: If render delay > 40% of LCP, the problem is CSS/JS blocking, not the image.
— Step 4: Re-measure on p75 mobile throttle (Slow 4G, 4x CPU), not your desktop.

Typical miss: blaming a 180KB hero when render delay was 1,900ms of 2,600ms.

Takeaway: fix the largest sub-part of LCP, not the largest byte count.