Is there a way to make jquery load asynchronously?

Hi –

In Autoptimize we’ve excluded jquery.js from being combined and deferred because some plugins needed it early.

So now the #1 warning from Google PageSpeed Insights is that we should “remove render-blocking Javascript” This is the one file it says is render blocking – jquery.js.

Is there a way we can say to load jquery asynchronously? Or defer it but have it be 1st in line? The problem is that at least 7 plugins on our site are calling it.

Is the only solution for us to manually change each <script src=”jquery.js”</script> and ADD attr=”async”? Or is there a solution within Autoptimze or a function we can paste in functions.php that adds attr=”async” to all these references to include jquery.js?

Thanks again for a great plugin!