Memory Leak In Firefox
A way to track memory leaks in Firefox is with the Leak Monitor Addon. It shows memory leaks of javascript (including extension-scripts). It shows memory leaks of javascript (including extension-scripts). Jun 13, 2019 Within 10 minutes of surfing Firefox was using about 1.2GB of RAM. I figured this was also causing Firefox to lag as well, like when you are typing but the word do not appear on screen, and suddenly after a slight pause they appear on screen. Firemin solves the memory leak issue, however the lag issue still remains.
So I've recently been having these issues with running out of memory in Windows.This is partly of course because of just having 4GB RAM, but mostly because Firefox version 24 seems to have a pretty major memory-leak.I have not had this problem before now, it only started happening with version 24.When I start my browser it uses about 500MB RAM with one page open (with no addons enabled), but over the course of about 5 minutes its memory usage keeps increasing without me doing anything. It seems to stop around 1100MB, which is very silly when you have one page loaded.I do have about 400 other pages that are unloaded, but that hasn't been causing problems before and I don't see why it should.I have tinkered with some memory cache settings previously, might there be something there that is spooking around causing problems with the latest update?Does anybody else have these kinds of problems with the latest version of Firefox? quote=SearzSo I've recently been having these issues with running out of memory in Windows.This is partly of course because of just having 4GB RAM, but mostly because Firefox version 24 seems to have a pretty major memory-leak.I have not had this problem before now, it only started happening with version 24.When I start my browser it uses about 500MB RAM with one page open (with no addons enabled), but over the course of about 5 minutes its memory usage keeps increasing without me doing anything. It seems to stop around 1100MB, which is very silly when you have one page loaded.I do have about 400 other pages that are unloaded, but that hasn't been causing problems before and I don't see why it should.I have tinkered with some memory cache settings previously, might there be something there that is spooking around causing problems with the latest update?Does anybody else have these kinds of problems with the latest version of Firefox?/quote. 'I'm ebolakin. You can refer to me as Ebola-Chan.'
- Vurtax'I also am Otherkin. Whenever autumn rolls around I can feel my kin-type slowly taking over my body. You must know, I identify as pumpkin. I can control it pretty good most of the time, but when September ends, I just cant hold it in anymore.
Whenever Im outside I see my brothers and sisters being chopped into soup, coffee, donuts, cake, drinks, bread - ppl even cut human faces into their skin, making a mockery out of their noble appearance. When I see things like that I cant control my pumpkin urges anymore. My natural instincts kick in. I then sit down motionless, while getting bright orange.' - Morgana L. I don't have any issues on Linux, my Firefox uses 370MiB with some(7) tabs open and some add-ons. I'll check it on Windows later. Perhaps it's loading the pages after all.
What happens with your memory when you start Firefox with no internet connection? Still the increase?I found. Have you checked it out already?
Perhaps you can make something up from about:memory.Have you taken a look at?Perhaps you can find help at a forum or mozilla support.Just some ideas, I'm not following Firefox development in any way. I wouldn't get any wiser from it either I'm afraid:)EDIT: A forum that isn't dedicated to games I mean. quote=Latest LegendI don't have any issues on Linux, my Firefox uses 370MiB with some(7) tabs open and some add-ons. I'll check it on Windows later. Perhaps it's loading the pages after all. What happens with your memory when you start Firefox with no internet connection?
Still the increase?I found url=article/url. Have you checked it out already? Perhaps you can make something up from about:memory.Have you taken a look at url=bugtracker/url?Perhaps you can find help at a forum or mozilla support.Just some ideas, I'm not following Firefox development in any way. I wouldn't get any wiser from it either I'm afraid:)EDIT: A forum that isn't dedicated to games I mean/quote. quote=Searzquote=DillButt64also 400 pages what, is that a serious number or exaggeration?/quote471 tabs to be exact.I've been at over 1000 before:Dquote=SkidmarkD23 tabs open, 531MB.Several add-ons running, one being greasemonkey running several scritps./quoteYeah, this seems to be a problem on my side.
I think I'm gonna do a clean install of Firefox after I go through all my tabs.quote=Latest LegendI don't have any issues on Linux, my Firefox uses 370MiB with some(7) tabs open and some add-ons. I'll check it on Windows later. Perhaps it's loading the pages after all. What happens with your memory when you start Firefox with no internet connection? Still the increase?/quoteI haven't tried without internet, but I seriously doubt that's it.I'm afraid the links aren't helping either://quote.
Firefox's memory usage has been a hot topic ever since it was first released. The main complaint is that the browser users too much RAM while running.Some users experience issues because of this, for instance slow downs on their system, while others may not notice any issues but still want something done about it.Back in the days, memory leaks were one of the main causes for the browser's high memory usage.Mozilla fixed these leaks in the core browser and most extension authors fixed memory leaks in their add-ons as well.While memory usage has improved significantly in recent years, complaints about it have not stopped. If you browse sites like Reddit for example, you still find user's complaining today.Here are tips to analyze the issue in FirefoxThe first thing you should do is run Firefox without add-ons and customizations.
Each add-on or extension you install may add to the browser's memory usage. Some add-ons, like Adblock Plus for example, may use more memory than the browser itself.The easiest way to start Firefox in Safe Mode is to hold down the Shift-key on the computer keyboard before starting the browser.Select Start in Safe Mode from the prompt that opens up. Safe Mode is a special mode in which add-ons and customizations are not loaded.Check the memory use of the browser - you may need to browse like you usually do for some time - to see if it gets as high as before.If it does not, add-ons installed in the browser are the most likely reason for the high memory usage that you are experiencing.Add-ons are not the only cause for high memory usage. Some sites and services may require lots of memory. This may be true for online games, sites that stream content in high quality, and sites that update regularly automatically.The last option that you can pursue is to use a different version of Firefox to see if it shows the same symptoms. If you are running of Firefox, Beta, Aurora or Nightly, then bugs may exist that cause higher than normal memory use.If you, you may want to try beta builds to see if the memory issue has been fixed or has improved.Last but not least, you may want to report your.
I can one up you.Cyberfox but the same issues as Firefox except it rarely crashes.Starts at 700MB, goes fast to 1.4Gb and gradually slowing to 3.7Gb (not very responsive above 2.5Gb).Close or reopen 2/3 times a day.Often open 10+ tabs opening at the same time, but always going back to 1-2. Memory does not go back even close to the same level.Memory minimization usually removes 10%, but it is back in few minutes.Addons: many including adblockplus/tabmixplus.Also have most of hopes on e10. Most of memory leaks (by my experience) is caused by extensions not releasing connections(?) with tabs, when you close them. When you close tab, memory is not released. This is not visible in about:addons-memory, but you can see this clearly in task manager. For large pages 50 megabytes can be lost at once. When you “undo closed tab” containing large page, and then close it again, this can be reproduced just in minutes.
What is worse, this leak can be “hidden” in virtual memory – “minimize memory usage” on about:memory will sweep “private bytes” into “virtual memory”. When virtual memory reaches your real ram size, firefox (or even entire system) starts to be slugish, and on 32bit systems may crash. Examples of extensions behaving like this may be “YouTube Link Title” (actually userscript), OmniSidebar or Google™ Translator.
Firemin is a trick, not a treat. Firefox stuff is kept in hard drive pagefile instead of RAM.
Firefox Memory Leak Windows 10
So instead of RAM hog, Firefox becomes CPU and pagefile hog. This process of constant swapping is waring off hard drives, RAM buses and CPUs much faster than normal.So for this trick to work you need two things.1)Money to replace computers or computer parts at faster rate.2)Fast RAM(much newer design) to be able to transfer pagefile parts at the speed that you do not notice slowdowns.So in conclusion, Firemin can give an illusion of memory optimizations but it does not do any. These are the extensions that i use!Reply, If you know any of the following extensions that can be causing memory leaks!!!Software:Firefox 37.0.1 (1859)OS:WINNT (x86-msvc)-Addon List Dumper (restartless) 0.1-AutoAuth 2.1-BehindTheOverlay 0.1.1-Bluhell Firewall 2.5.1-BugMeNot Plugin 3 (Disabled)-Copy Urls Expert 2.3.1-Default 37.0.1-DownThemAll! Purity – Cleans Up Facebook 9.3.2-Google™ Translator Lite 0.1.6-Greasemonkey 3.1-Homepage New Tab 1.0.8 (Disabled)-I don’t care about cookies 2.3.5 (Disabled)-Image Search Options 2.0.2-MEGA 2.0.219 (Disabled)-Menu Wizard 2.07 (Disabled)-Microsoft Office 2013 15.0.4514.1000-Multifox 3.1.0-Nimbus Screen Capture – editable screenshots. 6.4.1 (Disabled)-OpenH264 Video Codec provided by Cisco Systems, Inc.
1.3-Photo Gallery 16.4.3528.331-Pure URL 1.2.4-Pushbullet 179 (Disabled)-Quick Translator 1.0 (Disabled)-QuickMark 1.2.6-RIM Handheld Application Loader 7.1.0.48-Ratings Preview for YouTube™ 4.1.2 (Disabled)-Restart 1.2.3-S3.Google Translator 3.09-SaveFrom.net helper 4.85.2-Shockwave Flash 17.0.0.134-Simple White 2.2.9 (Disabled)-Strict Pop-up Blocker 0.2-The Addon Bar (restored) 3.2-VLC Web Plugin 2.2.0.0-Web Developer 1.2.5-Webrtc-Button 0.5-WikiWand: Wikipedia Modernized 3.1 (Disabled)-about:addons-memory 10-µBlock 0.8.8.2 (Disabled). Unlike many people, rather than using a lot of tabs (I use organized bookmark folders instead), I use a lot of addons – over 70 for my productivity. As of late, I’ve been averaging about mid-200’s MB at Firefox launch, and after about 15 minutes of work, and with 3-5 tabs open, I get as high as the 700’s, and it seems to level off. But in Linux, unlike Windows, I don’t freeze or experience latency with these same numbers (I copied my profile over months ago). And I’m talking an old Dell with only 4GB RAM running x64 Mint. In Android, unfortunately, I had to give up Firefox due to memory on a 1.5GB RAM, 16gb (expanded with 64gb sd card) Samsung Tab 4 with only about 6 addons. So, of course, the OS and how you handle it (i.e., minimize starting apps) can obviously have a lot to do with how Firefox bahaves itself within the environment it’s put in.:).
“Not everyone has a lot of RAM!!!”You forgot to mention the reason for the above. The reason of course is because most people are stupid and lazy when it comes to buying computers.See brand new laptop on the shelf at local PC store:i7 processor1TB HDDPowerful Intel graphics! (heh)2GB memoryDo you see the problem? People see i7 and their eyes glaze over to everything else. Bottom line is, if you’re buying a new computer with less than 8GB memory these days, then I’m sorry, but you goof’d up, big time.
Incorrect, Google Chrome uses way way way less RAM. LOGIC!It’s not because Firefox has more memory leaks or is any less inefficient however.
The primary difference is Google Chrome can actually manage the memory consumption. As a user you have power over it, unlike Firefox. This is due to how they’re each architected. Firefox runs everything in a single process. That process continues to grow and grow and grow as you use the browser.Google Chrome on the other hand was originally architected using a sandboxing technique, separating out tab groups into various different processes and spreading out the memory consumption amongst them. This is where people get the incorrect idea that Chrome uses more memory.
There is admittedly a bit of additional overhead required to run architecture like that, however the benefit of said architecture provides far greater weight than the tiny bit of memory overhead. This is because when you’re done using a tab group, or if you find one particular Chrome process spinning out of control (memory wise) because you left Facebook open overnight and it forever refreshes the timeline, always adding more and more to cache, you can just simply close out the tabs. This then unloads/exits the process and frees up every bit of memory it had been using.Alternatively with Firefox, to free up the memory you will need to kill the firefox process and reload the browser. This is now my normal method of running Firefox, use it until it starts to become too sluggish, then ‘taskkill /f /im firefox.exe’ waiting for it to close, then reopening the app. For myself, closing out the entire browser instance is generally far too impactful to my workflow, so I can only use Firefox as relief for when my Chrome tabs become too crazy. This article got me thinking about how good of a memory usage Waterfox (64-bit C+ compiled Firefox) is.I have only 2 Addons:: Adblock Plus and XmarksStarting up the browser, yielded 385MB of RAM usage.
However, normal browsing for me would take hours. So I decided to stress test it by opening up my bookmarks (313 of them) all at once.10 minutes later, they all loaded.
Maxing out the CPU at 43% and using roughly 8.8GB (28% RAM) This number wasn’t that surprising.I have over 20 youtube videos playing at once, dozens of picture galleries, dozens of ebay, amazon and the like sites and also a few Facebook pages. Performance after it was all loaded was only slightly sluggish. Even with everything loaded, it was using around 25% CPU while Flash player plugin was using 4% and 1GB of RAM.I’ll try this out later with vanilla Firefox but I don’t think it’ll handle this much abuse. And nobody can blame somebody else but Mozilla for overloading on side projects like “Hello” instead of providing basic functionality that more than 20-30% users want.Some of extensions I use that could be build-in.1)TabMixPlus.
AdBlock Plus, Ghostery and Firebug. Those are some of the prime extensions you should get rid off, when a sleek browser is what you’re looking for. AdBlock Plus alone causes my Firefox memory to rise by about 20-30 percent in total compared to uBlock. A real ad-blocker should actually save some memory, but with AdBlock Plus the browser needs more and that increases with the number of tabs you open. UBlock is an ad-blocker which was originally developed for Chrome/Chromium-based browsers and later ported to Firefox and Safari. In my opinion, it works better than AdBlock Plus and Ghostery do together.
It may require a higher maintenance by the user, just so you know. If that isn’t your forte, you might want to give AdGuard a try, which is very easy to use but differently maintained. My Fox currently stands at 537MB (of 16GB system memory). It has been running since this morning (about 8 hours by now), at the moment 11 tabs are open with one of them being a Youtube video. Oh, Add-ons you say? Yes, I’m also running 13 browser extensions.
They are in alphabetical order: Classic Theme Restorer, Downoad Panel Tweaker, Greasemonkey, InstantFox, KeeFox, Locationbar², NoSquint, OmniSidebar, Stylish, Tab Mix Plus, uBlock and View Cookies.My browser never runs for more than one day in a single session and the current version of my Firefox is a good enough browser, that it doesn’t need a reset anymore. Even with more than a dozen extensions active, I never run into memory problems like I did two or three years ago. While I may have issues with a few other bugs, memory leaks or a high memory usage in general are thankfully not among them.
Only when I abuse the hell out of my browser can I get it to use more than 1GB of RAM and then everything starts feeling a little bit sluggish – the switching of tabs, the loading of pages, the scrolling, the playback of videos, etc. I use:– Add to Search Bar– All-in-one Sidebar– Classic Theme restorer– Context Search– Greasemonkey– Imagus– Session ManagerFor an ad block I use a standalone program called Ad-fenderThat increases firefox start time A LOT.But What I really do every now and then is clean up / maintain the PROFILE FOLDER.Batch:for%%i in (.sqlite) do sqlite3%%i VACUUMdel /q gmscripts.db-wal(sqlite3.exe required)Also, every 6 months I start a new profile from scratch, migrate bookmarks and reinstall addons.And of course, ZERO disk cache. No cache at all.All that helps me to keep firefox running smooth and fast. ( 200Mb RAM usage ). I can’t answer directly, but this reply is to Azev:The huge problem I have with AdFender (and also Ad Muncher) is that their code is not open. I’m not talking about Open Source here, but if wanted to, I can unzip any browser extension and inspect its code – everything is just uncompiled JavaScript, after all. While that is a disadvantage in everyday use (any browser extension requires the use of a JS-interpreter and is thus both slower than pre-compiled code in execution and the memory requirements are higher as well), if one desires, there can be near absolute certainty that the ad-blocking extension is free of malicious code.My job is in the kind of technology field where end-user security and privacy has been a hot topic for some years now.
For a while that kind of code auditing was even a little part of my job when it was proposed (for the convenience of our office staff) to use external software in our company. Nobody can do anything against so-called 0-day attacks, because even fully audited software can never be secured completely and I was only two eyes of many and far from a professional in that field. More often than not, the greatest security risk sits in front of the computer anyway. But what I was getting at in the first paragraph is the trustworthiness of applications that cannot be easily verified. I wouldn’t even think of using Ad Muncher or AdFender on my personal computers/laptop, because it’s where I do my online banking and from where I access other sensitive webpages like Amazon for example.
These external applications hook into the whole network traffic of browsers and other software which use HTTP connections to gather or send data. To work best, they aren’t content with regular HTTP traffic but also perform the same kind of methods which are used in man-in-the-middle attacks on secured connections, in order to keep those websites free from ads as well.
For an end-user this is a desirable feature, but I think it should be worrying that these kinds of methods are used at all. Granted, many anti-virus software does the same, for secure mail at least.I didn’t know about AdFender before today, but a quick look at their website worries me a bit. The tool is developed and the site is apparently run by a company called AdFender Inc, yet their business information is not listed anywhere and the domain registry information is hidden from a whois query. At least with Ad Muncher I knew who was responsible for the software. This shouldn’t be taken as an insinuation or anything like that, but a security conscious user should contemplate these questions.I think I’ll leave it here, because I could ramble on, but I wanted to make this last point. You should see that your CPU usage doubles and data transfer rates on main hard drive going close to 100% when you using Firefox. If your computer is build from fast/new components you may not see it visually though.
My external hard drives run without any noise, but if you touch them they are warm. Few years ago, they would have required ventilation and still be noisy and hot as hell. Tech improves.It also helps if you do not use extensions like adblockers/toolbars that cause most of slowdowns. However, as I said in this thread, firemin is just faking memory optimization. I researched it thoroughly and geeks on all tech forums will tell you the same thing. Even firemin own developers are trying to mud the waters without any attempt to provide explanation. This is basic computer science.
Memory Leak Firefox Quantum
If you have tech that works, you should know how it works. I will only use addons in the last case.I’ll write a GreaseMonkey script or even my own plugin for ad blocking.I think the one big villain in all this history is Fanboy’s lists.All his lists are super huge.
That is the root of the problems.All ad blockers rely on those lists.What do we have in alternative to fanboy’s lists? Nothing!All those REGEX processing must be causing extreme CPU and RAM usage.I may be wrong, but I think Fanboy’s lists lack of integrity and maintenance. Otherwise they wouldn’t be that huge. Disappointing to see articles like this which, I would like to think, are just propagating an outdated view.
That said, irony, Tab Data was the only recent browser change that I tried that stuffed up Firefox’s performance. Unsure if it was a memory hog or more a freezing thing. Probably the latter. Martin I wouldn’t recommend any extensions that rob Peter (CPU) to pay Paul (explain memory usage).I run Firefox @ home on an old single-core CPU throttled down to just 1GHz by default. I’ve ancient video, graphics and sound adaptors. No 2D GPU acceleration of page rendering and as there’s somethng weird going on with my video driver, 60 FPS is an amusing pipe dream. I’ve only 2GB of older, slower RAM.
Firefox is certainly no speed demon under these conditions but I run memchaser constantly and Firefox is never using more than 1GB of RAM. Usually it hovers around 700MB which is perfectly reasonable. Not claiming I’m a typical user.
I’ve uninstalled Flash and don’t binge watch YouTube or sit on FaceSpace all day. I use Tab Groups to keep tabs in the background, unloaded, rather than spawning endless tabs because I’m too lazy to use alternatives, as some users appear to be. I also block a lot of the web’s junk through Ghostery, NoScript, AdBlock Plus, Stylish, Cookie Controller and BetterPrivacy. I’ve only two plugins but run 27 active extensions.So yeah Firefox is fine with memory for me. Jank is horrific but with the hardware I’m using and the super late transition to multi-process (e10s), that’s hardly surprising. “Some add-ons, like Adblock Plus for example, may use more memory than the browser itself.”See, I do use Adblock Plus and I understand that it is a factor, but here’s the thing that really irks me – I had already been using Adblock Plus for quite a while before Firefox ever got THIS bad.When I updated to a new version last summer What used to be “high” on the memory usage, lets say 350-400k, for me suddenly became my new LOW – IF that. I often don’t see it that “low” anymore.
Every day I’m forcing Firefox to close (forcing because it often hangs) and restart because it’s gone beyond that. Every single day it will at times hit 700-800k, sometimes 900k, and now and then over a million. What the heck is wrong with it exactly? It was “tolerable” up until last year, even though I wasn’t fond of it’s number then.
Now though is just ridiculous.Currently my memory is about 541k with three tabs open – two of which have AdBlock disabled on them. Disable AdBlock from the list and it just drops to 514k. This is “low” currently and rarely stays there. When it hits it’s highs it rarely drops back to these numbers without a restart. Hi there,Nice article and very useful tips about addons’ memory usage. My Memory goes from c. 100MB up to 1,000,000 and over, right now about 700k, but I control that manually and it’s not a problem.
However my real issue is not memory but CPU.I haven’t read every post here but most are about memory and addons. I think(!) I have these somewhat under control, however my Firefox CPU usage frequently goes up to 50% and beyond, and freezes my computer altogether. Any tips to reduce CPU usage that work?Many thanks in advance.