Are responsive image sizes used?

Hello Patrick, all,

I generated a static site from KadenceWP theme, its responsive.
I have the page break width to change from desktop size to tablet/mobile size at 1024px. I have page width set to narrow 800px. I have set my default image sizes in wordpress settings to be 700×700, 450×450, 300×300.

In the static site generated, when viewed on a mobile phone, indeed the images look like they are supposed to on the screen. Yet, when i open the image in a new tab, or if i download the image, i always get the maximum image size, 700×700.

My question:
Does the static site utilize the smaller images from the responsive wordpress theme, as grouped in the index.html file as srcset images, or does it only scale the one largest image, for all device sizes?

The implications are, that on mobile devices, they are downloading the largest file. This doesn’t take advantage of faster page loading times on mobile devices downloading smaller images.

Please let me know how it works and what to expect, and what options I have.

Thank you,
Scabuster

Scabuster