XSLT Checker: Will Your Sitemap Still Render in Chrome 158?

Paste your site, a sitemap or a feed URL. The checker fetches the file, looks for the <?xml-stylesheet?> instruction, and tells you what a person opening that link will see from 17 November 2026, when Chrome 158 stops running XSLT.

What it checks

Give it a sitemap or a feed and it checks that file directly. Give it a domain and it discovers the sitemaps declared in your robots.txt, then also tries the usual WordPress paths: /sitemap_index.xml, /sitemap.xml, /wp-sitemap.xml and /feed/. It checks up to twelve files per run and never follows a sitemap that points at another domain.

For each file it looks at three things: whether the response really is XML, whether it carries a processing instruction with a stylesheet, and whether that stylesheet is an XSL one. A text/css stylesheet on XML is unaffected by this change and is reported as such. Where it finds an XSL sheet, it also checks that the .xsl file still responds.

How to read the result

• No XSLT — the file carries no stylesheet. Nothing changes on 17 November.
• Uses XSLT — it carries an XSL sheet and renders formatted today. From Chrome 158 it will show a browser warning and the raw XML tree.
• Broken sheet — the instruction is there but the .xsl file no longer responds, so this file already renders unformatted.
• Not XML — the response does not look like XML, so XSLT is not involved.
• Could not read — we could not fetch the file. Check it by hand.

Does this affect my rankings?

No. XSLT is a rendering layer: the browser runs it to show you a table instead of tags. Crawlers fetch and parse the XML and never execute the stylesheet. Google’s sitemap documentation, Last updated 2026-07-08 UTC, contains no “XSLT”, no “stylesheet” and no “xml-stylesheet” — the sheet was never addressed to a search engine.

What changes is what a person sees when they open the link, which matters if you send that sitemap to a client or publish XML data for people to read. The full story is in our article on Chrome and Edge removing XSLT.

What to do if it says “Uses XSLT”

First: nothing urgent. Leaving the stylesheet in place is harmless, because after Chrome 158 the instruction is simply ignored. Your sitemap still validates and still lists the same URLs — you can confirm that with the XML sitemap checker.

If you want to keep a readable view, the two clean routes are transforming on the server and serving HTML, or publishing a plain HTML page that links the XML. On WordPress core sitemaps the wp_sitemaps_stylesheet_url filter — in core since 5.5.0 — displays raw XML when it returns a falsey value, which is the quickest way to see the post-removal state before November.

The short version

• Chrome 158 reaches stable on 17 November 2026 and stops running client-side XSLT.
• Edge uses the same engine; Microsoft has not published its own date.
• Crawling and indexing do not change in any case.
• Almost any WordPress running an SEO plugin publishes a sitemap with an XSL sheet.
• Leaving it alone is a valid choice: the effect is cosmetic, not technical.

FAQ

Is the XSLT checker free?

Yes, free and with no sign-up. There is a limit of 30 checks per 10 minutes per IP so the tool stays available to everyone.

Do you send my URL to a third-party service?

No. Fetches are made by the doctor-seo.net server through the WordPress HTTP API, capped at 2 MB per file, and the result is cached for 15 minutes. No third party is involved.

Do I have to remove the stylesheet before November?

No. After Chrome 158 the instruction is simply ignored. Removing it is a cosmetic decision, not a technical fix.

What about Firefox and Safari?

Chrome Platform Status records the Gecko and WebKit positions on removal as positive, but neither has published a timeline. Chrome is the only one with firm dates today.