Firefox issues

[Tanuki Tales]

So, I've noticed in the last few weeks that my computer's internet has been slowing down (though it's mostly in the case of Firefox, with only a smaller impact on my games that I run), causing Firefox to severely lag or even crash at times. My Firefox browser can be taking up hundreds of megabytes to gigabytes, even when I close redundant tabs and don't have that many open. Sometimes closing it and re-opening it works, but not for too long.

Is there anything I can do to cut down on the processing bloat for Firefox? Can I somehow look to see which tabs are causing the most processor use and thus not close things at random while missing the real offender?

Much thanks in advance.

[JustPlayItLoud]

Any webpage using any Flash, most likely. Firefox's inability to get along with Flash is fairly well noted. Just last night I finally fully switched over to Chrome because I was tired of Firefox opened only to Facebook causing so much system lag that scrolling through Facebook caused iTunes to skip. Other than that I don't know of any way to determine which tabs are the most resource intensive. You may want to consider switching over. It seems fewer add-ons are receiving continued Firefox support with a slower dwindling user base. And in my opinion they're trending toward an ever-uglier interface. After peaking in usage in 2009 it's been falling ever since. According to some statistics, Chrome has now achieved more popularity by percentage than Firefox ever did. I was hesitant to change because that's just how I am, but so far it's been great. Importing bookmarks and saved passwords was really easy, and logging in with Gmail makes syncing browser data across devices really easy. And the plethora of browser extensions that are actively supported and not terrible is mind blowing compared to Firefox.

[Max™]

about:memory

Extensions can be put on an "ask before activation" setting, on firefox you can install the Shumway extension which allows you to use html5 for more and more stuff instead of flash, which is great for me because Adobe decided they don't care about linux, and rather than wasting time maintaining a bunch of crap code the Mozilla team went for replacing it with an html5 alternative.

I've got a ton of rather intensive extensions and scripts (I have a script which colors the entire internet background like this and text like this so it's replacing the colors on each page when I load it the first time) and generally sit with 6 tabs open at a minimum, yet firefox only shows 5-8% memory use and 5-30% cpu use depending on what I'm loading/doing, though it drops to 1% cpu use anytime I stop typing or haven't loaded anything in a while.

The ugly interface comment is funny though, as the new australis crap looks like chrome.

Until I can rearrange the tabs/search+address bar/and buttons to be on the same row in chrome it is dead to me. I can't abide by all the wasted space, drives me up a wall.

[Tanuki Tales]

I...honestly don't trust Google, so I've been very reluctant to use Chrome. And Max, I barely understood of most of what you said, except in a generalist way.

I've noticed though that when it crashes and I bring it back sometimes, my tumblr tab is missing from the recovered tabs. Is tumblr causing this?

[valadil]

Disable all your extensions and restart. Now re-enable them one at a time. With luck, you'll have a couple that are hurting performance and that you won't miss.

A more extreme step is to delete your firefox profile and start up a new one. I do that every couple years.

If you're willing to get technical, I hear vacuuming some of firefox's sqlite files helps. You'll have to look up instructions for your OS of choice.

[Max™]

I...honestly don't trust Google, so I've been very reluctant to use Chrome. And Max, I barely understood of most of what you said, except in a generalist way.

I've noticed though that when it crashes and I bring it back sometimes, my tumblr tab is missing from the recovered tabs. Is tumblr causing this?

Open tumblr and then in a new tab type about:memory, hit measure on the leftmost button, if you see one of the values shown is ridiculously high, that should be your problem.

I hate tumblr because of all the stupid layers of animated crap people put on it, or doing things like converting the mouse into a sparkle crapping unicorn with a trail several seconds long, so it would not surprise me if it is causing massive slowdown.

[Tanuki Tales]

Open tumblr and then in a new tab type about:memory, hit measure on the leftmost button, if you see one of the values shown is ridiculously high, that should be your problem.

I hate tumblr because of all the stupid layers of animated crap people put on it, or doing things like converting the mouse into a sparkle crapping unicorn with a trail several seconds long, so it would not surprise me if it is causing massive slowdown.

I have no clue what I'm even really looking at, but all the data size values are about on par with one another and the total is 721 MB. I don't have Facebook open as a tab anymore and I do notice the lag is kind of gone, for now.

[Max™]

Well, 700 mb isn't much usage at all, unless you've only got 1 gb I guess. Click the Minimize memory usage button.

[Tanuki Tales]

Well, 700 mb isn't much usage at all, unless you've only got 1 gb I guess. Click the Minimize memory usage button.

That cut it down from about 550, to 495. What's "js-non-window" stuff? It's the second largest usage of memory after my actual tabs.

[Max™]

It's everything listed in the tree under it (shows that when you mouse over it btw) you should see one that says a number in parentheses tiny like this: ++(347) tiny, when you click on it the ++ will expand to -- and show what it is, should be extensions, plugins, and so forth.

Do you know how much total memory your system has? That doesn't really seem like a lot of usage, I was figuring you'd say something like a few GB of RAM used, not half to three quarters of a GB.

Shrink js non window and it will show individual tabs more easily under window objects, with top(https://someaddress.whatever) indicating which one is eating the most RAM.

[Tanuki Tales]

It's everything listed in the tree under it (shows that when you mouse over it btw) you should see one that says a number in parentheses tiny like this: ++(347) tiny, when you click on it the ++ will expand to -- and show what it is, should be extensions, plugins, and so forth.

Do you know how much total memory your system has? That doesn't really seem like a lot of usage, I was figuring you'd say something like a few GB of RAM used, not half to three quarters of a GB.

I have 8 gigabytes of RAM on this computer, with Firefox using up anywhere between 500 megabytes to 2 gigabytes.


Shrink js non window and it will show individual tabs more easily under window objects, with top(https://someaddress.whatever) indicating which one is eating the most RAM.

Under it is things like "Zones" and "strings" and "malloc heap". The entirety of it is using up 100 MB, so if it wasn't important, I was hoping I could just get rid of all of it.

[Max™]

Got 8 GB too, a gb of usage doesn't sound unusual due to how bloated facebook and tumblr are.

malloc heap sounds like memory allocation, so it's basically a map showing where each page stores the info it is using, and js would be javascript, so you're better off using noscript to cut down on that rather than try to clear it manually.

[Tanuki Tales]

Got 8 GB too, a gb of usage doesn't sound unusual due to how bloated facebook and tumblr are.

malloc heap sounds like memory allocation, so it's basically a map showing where each page stores the info it is using, and js would be javascript, so you're better off using noscript to cut down on that rather than try to clear it manually.

Then it was probably just a local lag spike and not Firefox?

[Max™]

Then it was probably just a local lag spike and not Firefox?

Yeah, what are you using to monitor your system right now?

If you don't have anything specific you use, might I suggest this: http://openhardwaremonitor.org/downloads/

Runs well, has tabs that you can use to see what info you are interested in, and it can help you figure out if there is a problem somewhere.

With it installed, reboot and before you turn anything else on just let it sit for a minute, that will let you see what a normal "unloaded" reading of the temp/usage sensors would be, open firefox and check it, open tumblr and check it, etc. I keep firefox at around 1800x1080 so I can have a column with my sensors/weather checker/clock/and top running so I can see immediately if a process hangs and starts to suck up processor or ram.

OHM can run on the taskbar so you can see at a glance if your temperatures jump up unusually high and track down whatever the problem is.

[Teddy]

I want to add that Firefox by standard has an unlimited cache, which means that if you do a lot of surfing and don't close it down, the cache will sooner or later expand into several Gigabytes. Especially on bloated pages like the endlessly scrolling Facebook. It can be limited though by going Tools > Settings, switching to the Advanced tab and checking something which should roughly read "Set aside automatic cache management" (I'm using Firefox in Swedish, so I'm sorry if it's a bit English as She Is Spoke http://i.imgur.com/ZRHtTJs.png), and then setting your prefered maximum cache size.

[Max™]

To add to that, I recently tried to deliberately use more RAM as it was sitting empty anyways, so I set the cache management to 0, set up a mount point in /tmp as a ramdisk, and used a script so firefox was cached in ram.

After browsing with that set up for most of a day I finally got up to 7800/7970 used, and with no hit on speed because it was all sitting in RAM anyways. It's a neat idea, but obviously complicated.

The point is that firefox will only start slowing down when it is having to hit the hard drive regularly, letting it load into ram means it is accessing and updating data from a very fast part of your system. Only having a tab or two open and it using that much ram is excessive, but the main firefox problem I would look for is when CPU use gets out of hand. Making sure you have hardware acceleration can let it use your graphics hardware appropriately rather than trying to hit the CPU over and over again for stuff it doesn't do as well.

Oh, and the english settings mentioned above on Firefox 30 is Preferences > Advanced > Network > Override Cache Management, and then set a size in there.

[HalcyonHearts]

Once upon a time I used Firefox as my default browser. Then it decided to make a false proxy for my internet connection so I could never use it again.