How come searches for "Firefox 6 memory leak" (without quotes) don't show this entry? Please don't give an excuse indexing, you are a large company and obviously designed the search functionality to show at least some results.

Since version 4, upto 6, Firefox has a memory leak with multiple windows/tabs opened. Fix the memory leak and fix the searching here. There is a HUGE problem or issue or whatever you want to call it: Firefox 6 has a memory leak. Wasn't fixed in Firefox 4 Firefox 5 or Firefox 6 . There, all versions are now in this so the only excuse for this not showing in searches is by deliberately not indexing this entry.

You can easily see the heap issue:

686.04 MB (100.0%) -- explicit ├──352.90 MB (51.44%) -- heap-unclassified

Main Process

Explicit Allocations 686.04 MB (100.0%) -- explicit ├──352.90 MB (51.44%) -- heap-unclassified ├──196.16 MB (28.59%) -- js │ ├──158.00 MB (23.03%) -- gc-heap │ ├───22.75 MB (03.32%) -- mjit-code │ ├───10.29 MB (01.50%) -- tjit-data │ │ ├───6.99 MB (01.02%) -- allocators-reserve │ │ └───3.30 MB (00.48%) -- (1 omitted) │ └────5.12 MB (00.75%) -- (2 omitted) ├───68.72 MB (10.02%) -- images │ ├──68.50 MB (09.99%) -- content │ │ ├──68.49 MB (09.98%) -- used │ │ │ ├──34.51 MB (05.03%) -- uncompressed │ │ │ └──33.98 MB (04.95%) -- raw │ │ └───0.01 MB (00.00%) -- (1 omitted) │ └───0.22 MB (00.03%) -- (1 omitted) ├───37.82 MB (05.51%) -- storage │ └──37.82 MB (05.51%) -- sqlite │ ├──29.67 MB (04.32%) -- places.sqlite │ │ ├──29.37 MB (04.28%) -- cache-used │ │ └───0.30 MB (00.04%) -- (2 omitted) │ ├───4.70 MB (00.69%) -- urlclassifier3.sqlite │ │ ├──4.62 MB (00.67%) -- cache-used │ │ └──0.08 MB (00.01%) -- (2 omitted) │ └───3.44 MB (00.50%) -- (12 omitted) └───30.45 MB (04.44%) -- layout

   ├──30.45 MB (04.44%) -- all
   └───0.00 MB (00.00%) -- (1 omitted)

Other Measurements 909.93 MB -- resident 870.31 MB -- private 743.46 MB -- heap-committed 660.54 MB -- heap-used 205.46 MB -- heap-unused

34.50 MB -- gfx-surface-image
17.04 MB -- gfx-d2d-surfacevram
 3.70 MB -- heap-dirty
 3.42 MB -- shmem-allocated
 3.42 MB -- shmem-mapped
 1.44 MB -- canvas-2d-pixel-bytes
 0.87 MB -- gfx-d2d-surfacecache
 0.00 MB -- gfx-surface-win32

I stopped using Firefox completely months ago due to the severe memory issues. Running Intel Core i7 notebook with 8GB of memory. As a graphic/media designer who regularly uses programs like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, video programs and such, I was astonished to see that Firefox 5 (and Firefox 6, still) were using 2+GB (yes, gigabytes) of memory after simply leaving it open for several hours, while my graphic-intensive programs were only using 50-300MB!!!

It simply got irritating to shut down FireFox ENTIRELY every 30 minutes or else my system would crash at 100% memory usage. Closing tabs didn't reduce memory usage as Firefox seemed stuck after the memory drain. Moved to Chrome. Works great.

Thanks mate. I also use Internet Explorer, Iron and Pale Moon. But that's not the point. I completely fail to see what kind of QA and Testing is done for the releases. This is the THIRD MAJOR RELEASE that has the same memory leak. Look here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=680713 Took 8 days to see something obvious. I quote: "There is not enough information in this bug." "Resolved as duplicate of xxx." I am willing to bet serious money against that they fixed it.

I never cared about opening bugs or such. I stayed with Firefox because of extensions but this is getting ridiculous. I bet I'm not the only one thinking like this and guess what. ALL the extensions I need are in IE9 and Iron (Chrome). But I want to see if they actually CARE about their users, as they so loudly acclaim. I mean, they say they can't reproduce it. Look here, I have actually PAGES of crashes: http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/8296/crashes.png

Ah, and one more thing. The search still doesn't show this entry while searching Firefox 6 memory leak. Which makes me think the search button is a bad joke.

I'm giving Firefox another week. Things need to change fast or they're going to lose users big time.

Clear Cookies & Cache

• https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Template:clearCookiesCache

Clear the Network Cache

• https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/How%20to%20clear%20the%20cache#w_clear-the-cache

Troubleshooting extensions and themes

• https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Troubleshooting%20extensions%20and%20themes

Troubleshooting plugins

• https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Troubleshooting%20plugins

Check and tell if its working.

Mozilla is addressing their memory leak problems in the next update.

http://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/2011/08/09/firefox-7-is-lean-and-fast-2/

@mha007: no, disabling all addons, cleaning everything doesn't help. It's got nothing to do with plugins, addons or anything. Been there, done that.

@PapaFrita: thanks. Just to point out the obvious: IE9 is already available and it's faster. Or should I choose Chrome/Iron? That doesn't fix the issue, now does it? There, something for you: http://news.softpedia.com/news/IE9-Usage-Share-Bigger-than-Those-of-Chrome-12-0-and-Firefox-5-Combined-on-Windows-7-in-the-US-214389.shtml

Create a New Profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problems.

-> Basic Troubleshooting: Make a New Profile

• https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Basic%20Troubleshooting#w_8-make-a-new-profile

-> If that New Profile works then you can recover your Bookmarks and Passwords from the Old Profile.

-> Recovering important data from an old profile

• https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Recovering%20important%20data%20from%20an%20old%20profile

Check and tell if its working.

@vpatrik

Usage share of web browsers history from 2004 Q4 to 2011

• http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Usage_share_of_web_browsers_%28Source_Net_Applications%29.svg

Ok, let me make it very clear, since we do everything else, except looking at the memory leak, it seems: On my laptop I reinstalled Windows 7 32bit, and put a fresh install of Firefox 6. Nothing more, nothing else. Opened the same setup as here, guess what happened after I left it overnight? Firefox crashed. I know, the fault lies with the motherboard drivers, graphic drivers, RAM, HDD, BIOS etc. I think the only fault lies with me, indeed, for putting up so much with all these crashes in Firefox. And yeah, I get it. You're trying to help. I respect that and I admire your enthusiasm. Now please respect me and stop trying to fix me, or my computers, and fix Firefox. Or help by doing the same setup as me and as other good bunch of people and you will see the miracle crash with your own eyes. Not gonna reply anymore, this ain't a forum. This is a bug opened. Either fix it or don't.

lol dude wait up :p you can see some more support articles

Firefox Crashes

• https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Firefox%20crashes
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_crashes

Firefox Consumes a lot of CPU Resources

• https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Firefox%20consumes%20a%20lot%20of%20CPU%20resources
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_CPU_usage

High Memory Usage

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Reducing_memory_usage_-_Firefox
• https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/High%20memory%20usage

Check and tell if its working.

It's a memory leak in the core modules somewhere, NOTHING to do with plugins (although obviously they might have their own problems).

I've just watched the memory usage for FF6 climb from 80 megs to 104 megs in less than 30 secs whilst displaying Google's home page (that doesn't visibly change nor have active components in it).

That's with NO browser or window changes, or even mouse movements.

Like others, I cannot afford to take the risk this represents (of a system crash and losing work as a consequence). If I can't roll back to 5.xx, I shall reluctantly have to investigate Chrome or IE (yeugh!).

What a shame.

I've subscribed to notification of comments posted here. One can only hope this is now bad enough to move up the dev team's priority list. Firefox has long been my browser of choice and recommendation. It'll be a huge shame if that's no longer the case.

WW

PS: since starting to type this it's now north of 126 meg and still climbing. Peak usage was 174 meg.

Believe it or not but Firefox 7.0 will be much better in memory usage.

Well I'm using 7 beta and my memory usage is just short of 600,000k with plugin container using another 220,000k. There is a massive problem with this!

@Viridis - Use the links mentioned in my 1st,2nd and Last reply on this Thread. Check and tell if any of it works.

Sorry for the delay. I have indeed tried the suggestions that have been made and I still have the same issue. One thing I have noticed on about:memory is that I have - ├──156.23 MB (37.29%) -- heap-unclassified - any ideas on that?

Same problem here. I have to KILL firefox task every hour... memory rises gradually from 300k to 1200-1300k, that's when FF starts to hog the system.

I just installed FF6 on a freshly built XP sp3 machine, and it started gobbling up memory and slowing down the whole system right away. 15 minutes into using it, I had to kill the process. There were no add-ons installed. It was as-is out of the box. Reverted to 3.6.3 right there.

I just loaded a 1080p HD video on youtube, only had about 5 tabs in total, and now the memory usage is 1.1gb and not going down.

This is clearly a memory leak as memory remains allocated and isn't released.

When I tried Firefox 7 beta, it still went to approximately 800mb with not many tabs open.

Using other browsers like Chrome don't use anywhere near this much memory and don't spike.

Well, maybe they will fix it, but too little too late. I've moved to Chrome, which for the same tabs open takes up 300MB compared to over 1GB for FF6. Plus, I do not sit there watching the memory slowly clocking up when doing nothing. The only reason I now use FF very occasionally is FireFTP