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Loading states 1:03
A 63-second explainer of Loading states, narrated over the same demo you can try yourself.
Try the interactive Loading states demo
What this video covers
Loading states are how an interface communicates that it's working while the user waits - a spinner, a skeleton screen, a determinate progress bar, or content streaming in. Good loading states reduce uncertainty, make a wait feel shorter, and reassure people the system hasn't frozen, turning dead time into a sense of progress.
The blank wait felt broken - did it freeze? The skeleton screen, previewing where content will land, felt faster and calmer even over the same delay, because you could see it working and knew what was coming. That's the job of a loading state: kill uncertainty and shrink the felt wait. Match the loader to the situation, and a necessary delay stops feeling like a fault.
