diff --git a/docs/guides/checkpointing_solutions/convert_checkpoint.md b/docs/guides/checkpointing_solutions/convert_checkpoint.md
index 6659857b8c..b9fa6f6cca 100644
--- a/docs/guides/checkpointing_solutions/convert_checkpoint.md
+++ b/docs/guides/checkpointing_solutions/convert_checkpoint.md
@@ -44,7 +44,7 @@ python3 -m pip install safetensors --no-deps
 export MODEL=<HF_MODEL> # e.g. 'llama3.1-8b-Instruct'
 export BASE_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY=<CKPT_PATH> # e.g., gs://my-bucket/my-checkpoint-directory
 export USE_PATHWAYS=0 # Set to 1 if you intend to use Pathways for training, 0 for McJAX
-export LAZY_LOAD_TENSORS=<LAZY_LOAD> # Set to True to save RAM
+export LAZY_LOAD_TENSORS=True # Defaults to True. Set to False only for multimodal models.
 ```
 
 ### Run Conversion
@@ -77,7 +77,7 @@ You can find your converted checkpoint files under `${BASE_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY}/0/i
 - `base_output_directory`: The path where the converted Orbax checkpoint will be stored; it can be Google Cloud Storage (GCS) or local.
 - `hardware=cpu`: The conversion script runs on a CPU machine.
 - `checkpoint_storage_use_zarr3` and `checkpoint_storage_use_ocdbt`: These storage flags enable McJAX compatibility when set to True (the default). For Pathways, these should be False.
-- `--lazy_load_tensors` (Optional): Enables on-demand loading of weights to prevent OOM (Out of Memory) errors. Highly recommended for large models to reduce memory usage during conversion. For example, converting a Llama3.1-70B model with `--lazy_load_tensors=true` uses around 200GB of RAM and completes in ~10 minutes.
+- `--lazy_load_tensors` (Optional): Defaults to `True`. Enables on-demand loading of weights to prevent OOM (Out of Memory) errors. Highly recommended for large models to reduce memory usage during conversion. For example, converting a Llama3.1-70B model uses around 200GB of RAM and completes in ~10 minutes. **Note:** This must be overloaded to `False` for multimodal models (e.g., Gemma3) as lazy loading is not yet supported for them.
 - `--hf_model_path` (Optional): Specifies a customized remote directory or local directory containing the model weights. If unspecified, we use the [default Hugging Face repository ID](https://github.com/AI-Hypercomputer/maxtext/blob/main/src/maxtext/utils/globals.py) (e.g., openai/gpt-oss-20b). This is necessary for locally dequantized models like GPT-OSS or DeepSeek.
 - `--save_dtype` (Optional): Specifies the data type of saved model weights. Default to `bfloat16` to save memory.
 
diff --git a/src/maxtext/checkpoint_conversion/to_maxtext.py b/src/maxtext/checkpoint_conversion/to_maxtext.py
index 8e73621c69..9c6d6a6f72 100644
--- a/src/maxtext/checkpoint_conversion/to_maxtext.py
+++ b/src/maxtext/checkpoint_conversion/to_maxtext.py
@@ -816,7 +816,7 @@ def _merged_getter(key):
 
 def main(
     args: Sequence[str],
-    lazy_load_tensors: bool = False,
+    lazy_load_tensors: bool = True,
     eager_load_method: str = "safetensors",
     hf_model_path: str | None = None,
     revision: str | None = None,
@@ -1077,7 +1077,7 @@ def _eager_getter(key):
       "--lazy_load_tensors",
       type=str2bool,
       required=False,
-      default=False,
+      default=True,
       help="Whether to use lazy loading of HF tensors",
   )
   # Eager load uses `transformers_class.from_pretrained` with auto dtype or `safetensors.safe_open` with pt.
diff --git a/tests/integration/checkpoint_conversion_test.py b/tests/integration/checkpoint_conversion_test.py
index e73b71d076..e40ffaac02 100644
--- a/tests/integration/checkpoint_conversion_test.py
+++ b/tests/integration/checkpoint_conversion_test.py
@@ -54,7 +54,6 @@ def test_qwen3_30b_a3b_roundtrip_conversion(self):
           "checkpoint_storage_use_ocdbt=False",
           "checkpoint_storage_use_zarr3=False",
           "--save_dtype=bfloat16",
-          "--lazy_load_tensors=True",
       ]
       env = os.environ.copy()
       env["JAX_PLATFORMS"] = "cpu"