Memory leak
Since the last updates Firefox client has a memory leak issue.
My habit is to open a high number of tabs. Never had any problem until the latests release. The tabs don't seem to free up the memory when I close the tabs. For example the client reached ~2Gb of RAM, the usage remained the same even if I closed the tabs. I have to use the Free memory utility from about:memory page to keep the old behavior.
Also the memory seems to build up if I leave the client open for an extended period of time. And when the computer enters sleep mode, I have to restart the client. For me this is an old issue but it gets worse every release.
I have tried most of the solutions presented but none of them work. I'm also aware of the link from the forum which gives some advices to lower the memory usage.
At work I have Chrome installed and seems to work better. The home computer is better than the one from my workplace and I have more or less the same plugins (Flash, Adobe, Java, etc.) So I assume that the browser has something to do with it.
Any ideas what could keep the browser from cleaning up the memory? The memory seems to be freed when GC is used manually.
Chosen solution
I already looked on those posts. Didn't really helped, but thank you for the replies.
One of these days I stumbled on some unresponsive scripts. They were leading to one of the Add-ons: Skype click to call I removed it and Firefox is more responsive now.
I'll add some updates if I get more unresponsive script errors.
I'm happy that Firefox works better now.
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Hi cosmin281, Thank you for your question. I understand that there is an issue with memory when you use the Firefox Browser. Currently the tool built into the browser is the one that you are using already, but there are a few troubleshooting steps also mentioned in this kb article.
Other suggestions I would make would be to update your Flash and other extensions. If you suspect other issues, running a memory report on the same page, [about:memory] the top page consuming RAM can be seen in that report. The other place to check is the task manager to see if it is also a plugin.
We can further troubleshoot if restarting the browser still consumes the large amount of memory that you are experiencing. Thank you.
You can try to disable hardware acceleration in Firefox.
- Tools > Options > Advanced > General > Browsing: "Use hardware acceleration when available"
You need close and restart Firefox after toggling this setting.
Chosen Solution
I already looked on those posts. Didn't really helped, but thank you for the replies.
One of these days I stumbled on some unresponsive scripts. They were leading to one of the Add-ons: Skype click to call I removed it and Firefox is more responsive now.
I'll add some updates if I get more unresponsive script errors.
I'm happy that Firefox works better now.
Modified by cosmin281
Open your add-ons manager. Disable a few add-ons, then Restart Firefox. If the problem continues, disable some more (restarting FF). Continue until the problem is gone. After, you know what group is causing the issue. Re-enable the last group ONE AT A TIME (restarting FF) until the problem returns.
Once you think you found the problem, disable that and re-enable all the others, then restart again. Let us know who the suspect is detective.
I have like 4 add-ons activated. From which only the Adblock Plus seems to cause problems. I've read on the forums about it : https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/05/14/adblock-pluss-effect-on-firefoxs-memory-usage/. (Hope I'm not breaking any rules about posting the link here. If so, please leave a comment and I will remove it.) If you read the comments, you will see there are some issues regarding the processing and the extra generated CSS. I really hope that in the future this issue will be solved. On the other hand, this seems not to affect my user experience too much. The pages load a bit slower (sometimes I don't even notice), but there isn't a flood of advertising.
Anyway, Adblock is here to stay. (Greedy people made this a necessity)
Since the change from my previous post, Firefox behaves much better.
You might get more help from Forum; Adblock Plus Homepage {web link}