Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Where are multiple Firefox processes?

  • 2 replies
  • 39 have this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by DavidCal

more options

I've updated to version 48.0.2 recently and it says in about:support that I have multiprocess windows. However, Process Explorer shows only one firefox.exe and one plugin-container.exe process. Are these the only processes that should be running? Shouldn't there be multiple firefox.exe processes in task manager like there are multiple chrome.exe for Google Chrome? And which process runs browser UI and which — web content?

I've updated to version 48.0.2 recently and it says in about:support that I have multiprocess windows. However, Process Explorer shows only one firefox.exe and one plugin-container.exe process. Are these the only processes that should be running? Shouldn't there be multiple firefox.exe processes in task manager like there are multiple chrome.exe for Google Chrome? And which process runs browser UI and which — web content?

Chosen solution

hi user02, yes when multi-process processing is enabled in firefox 48 there are currently ownly two processes at work (firefox.exe for the ui and plugin-container.exe for web content). in the future this will be split up further into one process for the content of each tab. for more information about that you can also refer to this recent blog post: https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2016/08/02/whats-next-for-multi-process-firefox/

Read this answer in context 👍 4

All Replies (2)

more options

Chosen Solution

hi user02, yes when multi-process processing is enabled in firefox 48 there are currently ownly two processes at work (firefox.exe for the ui and plugin-container.exe for web content). in the future this will be split up further into one process for the content of each tab. for more information about that you can also refer to this recent blog post: https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2016/08/02/whats-next-for-multi-process-firefox/

more options

I still cannot figure out what this muliprocess thing has to do with me as an end user. Some of my extrensions ae marked "not compatible." What does this mean. Seems like the messaghe is for developers, not end users. In any event, it would be nice if Firefox woiuld tell us what we arew supposed to do if an extension is marked "not compatible."