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Revisiting a tab - page goes blank / back to home page

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  • 2 have this problem
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  • Last reply by Paul

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I've done a bit of searching and I'm surprised nobody else seems to be discussing this issue.

It appears to be related to the fact that, if I haven't visited a tab in more than a few minutes, when I reopen that tab, Firefox reloads the page. I completely understand why this is done, and I still think it's a poor choice. Half the time it takes me away from the actual page or content I was looking at, and starts me over from the entry point (think infinite scroll type pages). There's a refresh button for a reason. Do less, Firefox.

But the problem I'm having is that this auto-refresh feature is broken. About 10% of the time, it just shows me the tab home page. It doesn't even reload the site. The address is not in the address bar. The refresh button is grayed out. Sometimes, if I wait long enough (30-45 real, actual seconds - feels like a very long time), the page will load. Sometimes. Most of the time I have to go into my history and re-open the tab that way. Sometimes it will go from the home page to a blank white screen, as if it's about to load the page, and then stalls there - again, nothing in the address bar, refresh button is grayed out. Depending on how far it got in this process, I may be able to swipe down to initiate a refresh, and if that works the page will usually load from there.

Is there a setting where I can disable this auto-refresh feature? Can I extend how long it keeps the cached page? Can I make it so that when I re-open the tab, I'm reliably back where I was? I thought that was the purpose of tabs?

Help?

I've done a bit of searching and I'm surprised nobody else seems to be discussing this issue. It appears to be related to the fact that, if I haven't visited a tab in more than a few minutes, when I reopen that tab, Firefox reloads the page. I completely understand why this is done, and I still think it's a poor choice. Half the time it takes me away from the actual page or content I was looking at, and starts me over from the entry point (think infinite scroll type pages). There's a refresh button for a reason. Do less, Firefox. But the problem I'm having is that this auto-refresh feature is broken. About 10% of the time, it just shows me the tab home page. It doesn't even reload the site. The address is not in the address bar. The refresh button is grayed out. Sometimes, if I wait long enough (30-45 real, actual seconds - feels like a very long time), the page will load. Sometimes. Most of the time I have to go into my history and re-open the tab that way. Sometimes it will go from the home page to a blank white screen, as if it's about to load the page, and then stalls there - again, nothing in the address bar, refresh button is grayed out. Depending on how far it got in this process, I may be able to swipe down to initiate a refresh, and if that works the page will usually load from there. Is there a setting where I can disable this auto-refresh feature? Can I extend how long it keeps the cached page? Can I make it so that when I re-open the tab, I'm reliably back where I was? I thought that was the purpose of tabs? Help?

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Hi

This does appear to be an issue that our developers are aware of and are looking into. You can follow progress on this and add comments at:

https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-ios/issues/14678