How to Optimize WordPress with Breeze Heartbeat API Settings

The Heartbeat API in WordPress allows your browser to communicate with the server in real-time — helping with autosaves, dashboard updates, and notifications. However, this background activity can sometimes consume unnecessary server resources.

The Heartbeat API tab in the Breeze Cache plugin gives you the ability to control how often these background tasks run, helping improve your site’s performance, especially on busy or resource-limited servers.

Table of Content:

The Heartbeat API settings in Breeze help you reduce unnecessary background activity in WordPress by controlling how often it runs.

This improves overall performance, especially on busy websites or limited-resource servers.

The Heartbeat API settings in Breeze help you reduce server load by customizing how often WordPress sends background requests.

You can manage heartbeat activity for the following areas:

The WordPress Heartbeat API runs periodic background tasks to keep things synced between your browser and the server. It works through a file called admin-ajax.php.

Here are the main things it handles:

Although useful, these background processes can slow down your site or consume extra server resources, especially on high-traffic websites.

With Breeze, you can fine-tune or disable the Heartbeat API to match your website’s needs. This is done through three main options:

What it does:

Manages heartbeat activity on the public side of your website (i.e., what visitors see).

Best for:

Disabling unnecessary background activity when no admin actions are required on the frontend.

What it does:

Controls autosave and content syncing while you’re editing posts or pages.

Best for:

Reducing autosave frequency or keeping it enabled for safety during writing.

What it does:

Manages heartbeat requests on the WordPress admin dashboard (e.g., user notifications, plugin alerts).

Best for:

Reducing background activity when you're not actively working in the dashboard.

For each of the above settings, Breeze allows you to choose how frequently the heartbeat should run:

You can adjust these intervals individually for frontend, post editor, and backend based on how your team uses WordPress.

In most WordPress installations, the heartbeat functionality is enabled by default via this code:

wp_enqueue_script('heartbeat');

Breeze does not remove this, but lets you manage how often it runs — helping reduce overhead without breaking features like autosave.

After making any changes to your Heartbeat settings:

That’s it! We hope this article was helpful.

If you need assistance, feel free to: