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Firefox: About memory consumption

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Hi, all technology gurus.

I'm using Firefox ver.88.0.1 and recently noticed that Firefox uses much memory for almost all webpages (e.g. Youtube, reddit, Gmail, Wiki...)

Very often the memory consumption reaches 4.5GB and sometimes Firefox starts to work awkwardly (responds to mouse very slowly, e.g. responds after 1min. ) Garbage Collection reduces a bit to 4.485GB and Firefox still works awkwardly. Only Restarting Firefox resolves this issue (memory consumption reduces to 1.884GB, that is 2.7GB reduction!). (See attached pictures)

Should I think this is proper and intended behavior of Firefox? I cannot help thinking that some kind of needless memory allocations are happening during Firefox keep running. Anyone has suggestion or thought about this ?

Sincerely

Hi, all technology gurus. I'm using Firefox ver.88.0.1 and recently noticed that Firefox uses much memory for almost all webpages (e.g. Youtube, reddit, Gmail, Wiki...) Very often the memory consumption reaches 4.5GB and sometimes Firefox starts to work awkwardly (responds to mouse very slowly, e.g. responds after 1min. ) Garbage Collection reduces a bit to 4.485GB and Firefox still works awkwardly. Only Restarting Firefox resolves this issue (memory consumption reduces to 1.884GB, that is 2.7GB reduction!). (See attached pictures) Should I think this is proper and intended behavior of Firefox? I cannot help thinking that some kind of needless memory allocations are happening during Firefox keep running. Anyone has suggestion or thought about this ? Sincerely
Attached screenshots

All Replies (11)

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Sorry, I forgot to write. Windows10 ver.2004 AMD CPU + 16GB memory I set the thread number to be 1.

Modified by ghc03361

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Yes, FF is a memory hog because its not a simple shell of a browser.

But regardless, here is an experiment you can do to further your understanding:

Open the task manager

Launch all 3 browsers, FF Edge Chrome, at same time.

Have only 1 blank tab open on all of them.

Next open a website on all of them.

Then examine the memory usage.

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Thank you for the reply. Probably I understand what you want to write in the reply.

In the past I used a certain Unix system and it could keep running stably over one year with no serious memory consumption increase. That system was developed by just one company. Firefox is a mixture of software components from various programmers so it's hard to maintain its integrity, I know that from the bottom of my heart.

I wanted too much, I think.

Thank you, again.

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Yes, as the computer power becomes ever more powerful and less costly, apps become ever more complex and fancier.

I am not sure if there is a solution for low memory consumption other than buidling a super basic browser to visit websites. But such things could not function because it would be bombarded by multi-tudes of ads, cookies, hijacks, pop ups, etc....

So essentially it takes a lot of ammo and weaponary to fight against the all the assualt and sophisticated strategies on peoples internet activities.

Basically for us, the internet is for fun. But for them, the internet means $$$

In any case, we are glad to help.  :-)

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Hi. I add the additional info. about memory consumption.

Task manager (in Firefox) started to report memory consumption in the different way before a few days. New report style shows tremendously small amount of memory consumption for web pages, however, the total memory consumption of FireFox is still huge 4.8GB. (see attached file)

Sometimes, it reaches 5.8GB. And, response time for mouse click is over 1min.

As dbben wrote, Firefox eats much memory and I know strict memory control is impossible under the open source development (intensive source code review is applied to limited software components). In addition I don't think this behavior is an usual light mistake. Possibly, this may be a bug, to be solved.

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Start Firefox in Troubleshoot Mode to check if one of the extensions ("3-bar" menu button or Tools -> Add-ons -> Extensions) or if hardware acceleration or userChrome.css is causing the problem.

  • switch to the DEFAULT theme: "3-bar" menu button or Tools -> Add-ons -> Themes
  • do NOT click the "Refresh Firefox" button on the Troubleshoot Mode start window

You can create a new profile as a quick test to see if your current profile is causing the problem.

See "Creating a profile":

If the new profile works then you can transfer files from a previously used profile to the new profile, but be cautious not to copy corrupted files to avoid carrying over problems.

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Hi. This is the test of Firefox.

EDIT: This post is submitted to confirm Firefox function. When I posted the reply immediately before this, this site responded to Firefox with the error message and the post was lost. So I tested with short message. (This EDIT may be another test of posting)

Modified by ghc03361

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Hi, cor-el, and dbben. Thank you for the reply.

I have not changed userChrome.css and theme. I installed 7 add-ons (shown in the previous screen shots). 3 months ago I started to use this Firefox with a new profile, so my user profile does not seem to much.

Now I disabled H/W accerelation and entered troubleshooting mode.

I understand the issue is not solved if I use Firefox as before. I will encounter the issue finally. What I need is just stable functionality of Firefox. If needed, I send debug information (but the issue occurs randomly, I'm not sure when I can send)

Sincerely

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Win windos runs low on physical memory, it is supposed to use virtual memory to compensate.

In the past, windows wasnt very good at this, imo. But win 10 is much better at, imo.

Also, the hibernation feature, if you use it, is tied to the virtual memory.

So maybe if you do not use hibernation feature, you can tweek the virtual memory.

Additionally, as i had mentioned how software is also become more complex and consume lots of memory, its a good idea not to install more software to the o.s. than what is absolutely necessary. In some case, this can be regulared/controlled via different windows profiles whereas one profile can be used for games and nothing else. And another profile can be used for graphics designing and nothing more. In otherwords, keeping the oranges and apples separate is much better than keeping them in one basket, per se.

Question: Is your system updated to 21h1 ?

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Hi. I always disable hibernate, fast start-up. use only S3 mode sleep in all PCs I have (even so, my laptop cannot keep running over a week. Windows is really something trash except Windows XP & 7).

My laptop has 16GB memory and most heavy program is Firefox. 2nd heavy program is painting software and it uses 2GB at most (usually under 200MB), so RAM always has much spare space. Averaged CPU load is always less than 20% and under power-saving settings (lowest performance is set to be 5%). GPU performance settings are also power-saving mode (FPS is limited to 60). I think there is no reason for heavy load in my PC except Firefox. (Games I play is only Microsoft Solitair)

GPU is only built-in GPU (Radeon Graphics). No double GPU. Windows 10 version is 2004.

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Thanks for the additional info.

My concern was that you may have a home machine that has a miminal amount of ram. But it seems you may have a business or gaming class machine.

In any case, FF is a memory hog. But to be fair, i think most webpages are also designed with lots of memory consuming images too.

There is no real way for us on the front end to reduce the memory consumption of firefow. At best, disabling this and that, uninstalling extensions here and there, may help a little.

Lets hope that the new release of FF in a few days, helps with this issue.  :-)