Definition: Minimal Download Strategy is a SharePoint feature that is used to optimize page rendering.

• When user moves from one page to another page, it only downloads the changes between the two pages.
• This feature reduces the amount of data browser needs to download while navigating between the pages.

How to activate MDS feature:

• Go to Site Settings >> Manage site features
• Activate feature - Minimal Download Strategy

Some Points:

• You can identify MDS enabled site just by looking at the URL. All the pages in MDS enabled site will have “start.aspx” for rendering. The requested new page will have “#” before it.
• If MDS is enabled, URL of the page looks like below. /_layouts/15/start.aspx#/SitePages/default.aspx
• If MDS is not enabled, the page looks like below.
  /SitePages/defaut.aspx.
• MDS will not work on publishing site.
• Some of the SharePoint site templates like App, Blog, Community, Projects, Team and Wiki have the MDS feature activated by default.