Having source maps in production is not a best practice. Then why the error?

[alex-vukov]

FAQ

• Yes, my issue is not about variability or throttling.
• Yes, my issue is not about a specific accessibility audit (file with axe-core instead).
• Yes, my issue is not answered by other FAQs.

URL

www.google.com

What happened?

Whenever I test a website with Lighthouse I always see this error Missing source maps for large first-party JavaScript. It is a common (and best) practice not to enable source maps on production for security reasons. Why is this message always shown as an error under Best Practices?

What did you expect?

I expect not to see this error because source maps should only be enabled on internal and test websites

What have you tried?

No response

How were you running Lighthouse?

Chrome DevTools

Lighthouse Version

12.0.0

Chrome Version

126.0.6478.127

Node Version

No response

OS

MacOS

Relevant log output

No response

[adamraine]

Valid source maps are only encouraged to provide Lighthouse with more detailed information to give better advice. If you prefer not to expose source maps in production environments that's fine (although - it is still possible and very encouraged to figure out how to allow source maps in production to just authenticated clients, which would allow Lighthouse to see it from DevTools).

The source maps audit is not actually scored so will not affect your best practices score.