4 ms·

Was using Firefox from a very long time , but for some reason recently Firefox is very slow on my machine . Even chromium starts up slowly . Google Chrome opens

Was using Firefox from a very long time , but for some reason recently Firefox is very slow on my machine . Even chromium starts up slowly . Google Chrome opens the fastest and is very light on resources .

farresito 10y ago
You are not alone. I also stopped using Firefox six months ago or so because it was incredibly slow. I'm keeping an eye on it to see if the performance improves, but unless something big happens, I don't think I will go back to it.
- nautical 10y ago
  With every release I try it out in hope of improvements , but have not seen major gains .
- dashundchen 10y ago
  I noticed this around version 49. Through process of elimination I found out it was caused by two plugins I had: Privacy Badger and Adblock Plus. Switched to uBlock origin and removed the other two, performance is normal again.
  - acomar 10y ago
    I've found the specific sites you have open matter too. Google products (inbox especially) and AWS in particular are awful if you leave them open for a while. I stopped doing that as soon as I noticed. On linux I also saw a lot of benefit to making sure hardware acceleration was force enabled (it's disabled on the platform by default for some reason; I also had to start optirun-ing it on my laptop). Firefox has literally never been faster or behaved better since making those two changes.
zobzu 10y ago
try refresh. ive no issue with firefox. uses less memory too
- cpeterso 10y ago
  To "refresh" your Firefox user profile, open the about:support and click the "Refresh" button. It should preserve your tabs, bookmarks, and saved passwords but will lose your installed add-ons (so note which add-ons you have now that you will want to re-install).
binaryanomaly 10y ago
Not sure what exactly your issue is but in general Firefox was never faster than it is now - since electrolysis support (multiprocess windows).
- nautical 10y ago
  Not sure , currently with one tab open chrome is reporting about 1.4% and firefox about 4.8% . Same page opened on both .
  - reitanqild 10y ago
    I know one page that does something similar and that is google (front page and search results). They are the biggest reason why I use an extension to stop or unload background tabs.
- bonsai80 10y ago
  I use it as much as I can, although for development tasks Chrome performs much better for me and certain sites load slower. I'm looking forward to a year from now when servo/quantum/whatever is in there. In the mean time though, I'm thankful to have a non-commercial party in the mix and am happy to use it.
  - binaryanomaly 10y ago
    Couldn't agree more, same here.
- 2bitencryption 10y ago
  I thought that only rolled out to a small percent of users, and only users without extensions, and it's not even "per-thread tabs" but rather "one thread for UI, one thread for content."
thrombos 10y ago
This is because Chrome stays in memory even when closed where Firefox doesn't.
- febed 10y ago
  I thought this was the case too, so I tried letting Firefox stay in memory using the Minimizetotray extension but it was still lagging. I had e10s enabled with just ublock origin enabled. I quit trying to optimize it further and switched back to Chrome.
norswap 10y ago
Same here. Part of the problem turned out to be related to youtube: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/41zh1y/sick_and_tired_of_firefox_lagging_on_youtube/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/41zh1y/sick_and_ti... (Don't be misled, it affected MUCH more than youtube - I also had very little subscription, 5 or so). Nevertheless, Firefox is part of the problem. And performance is still sub-par since I applied the fix (although not quite as bad). Gotta love the people that answer "works for me".
ac29 10y ago
If you are on Linux, it might help to run profile-cleaner [0] on your Firefox install to vacuum and reindex the assorted sqlite databases it uses. Probably wont help general performance, but might help startup time. [0] https://github.com/graysky2/profile-cleaner https://github.com/graysky2/profile-cleaner
yAnonymous 10y ago
Chrome is cheating. It runs as a service and starts when you boot the computer. Then it's loaded from memory. Startup times are only comparable when you start Firefox for the second time and at least for me, Firefox is faster then. Rendering and the developer tools however seem to be slower in Firefox indeed, sometimes significantly.

farresito 10y ago

You are not alone. I also stopped using Firefox six months ago or so because it was incredibly slow. I'm keeping an eye on it to see if the performance improves, but unless something big happens, I don't think I will go back to it.

nautical 10y ago
With every release I try it out in hope of improvements , but have not seen major gains .
dashundchen 10y ago
I noticed this around version 49. Through process of elimination I found out it was caused by two plugins I had: Privacy Badger and Adblock Plus. Switched to uBlock origin and removed the other two, performance is normal again.
- acomar 10y ago
  I've found the specific sites you have open matter too. Google products (inbox especially) and AWS in particular are awful if you leave them open for a while. I stopped doing that as soon as I noticed. On linux I also saw a lot of benefit to making sure hardware acceleration was force enabled (it's disabled on the platform by default for some reason; I also had to start optirun-ing it on my laptop). Firefox has literally never been faster or behaved better since making those two changes.

zobzu 10y ago

try refresh. ive no issue with firefox. uses less memory too

cpeterso 10y ago
To "refresh" your Firefox user profile, open the about:support and click the "Refresh" button. It should preserve your tabs, bookmarks, and saved passwords but will lose your installed add-ons (so note which add-ons you have now that you will want to re-install).

binaryanomaly 10y ago

Not sure what exactly your issue is but in general Firefox was never faster than it is now - since electrolysis support (multiprocess windows).

nautical 10y ago
Not sure , currently with one tab open chrome is reporting about 1.4% and firefox about 4.8% . Same page opened on both .
- reitanqild 10y ago
  I know one page that does something similar and that is google (front page and search results). They are the biggest reason why I use an extension to stop or unload background tabs.
bonsai80 10y ago
I use it as much as I can, although for development tasks Chrome performs much better for me and certain sites load slower. I'm looking forward to a year from now when servo/quantum/whatever is in there. In the mean time though, I'm thankful to have a non-commercial party in the mix and am happy to use it.
- binaryanomaly 10y ago
  Couldn't agree more, same here.
2bitencryption 10y ago
I thought that only rolled out to a small percent of users, and only users without extensions, and it's not even "per-thread tabs" but rather "one thread for UI, one thread for content."

thrombos 10y ago

This is because Chrome stays in memory even when closed where Firefox doesn't.

febed 10y ago
I thought this was the case too, so I tried letting Firefox stay in memory using the Minimizetotray extension but it was still lagging. I had e10s enabled with just ublock origin enabled. I quit trying to optimize it further and switched back to Chrome.

norswap 10y ago

Same here. Part of the problem turned out to be related to youtube: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/41zh1y/sick_and_tired_of_firefox_lagging_on_youtube/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/41zh1y/sick_and_ti... (Don't be misled, it affected MUCH more than youtube - I also had very little subscription, 5 or so). Nevertheless, Firefox is part of the problem. And performance is still sub-par since I applied the fix (although not quite as bad). Gotta love the people that answer "works for me".

ac29 10y ago

If you are on Linux, it might help to run profile-cleaner [0] on your Firefox install to vacuum and reindex the assorted sqlite databases it uses. Probably wont help general performance, but might help startup time. [0] https://github.com/graysky2/profile-cleaner https://github.com/graysky2/profile-cleaner

yAnonymous 10y ago

Chrome is cheating. It runs as a service and starts when you boot the computer. Then it's loaded from memory. Startup times are only comparable when you start Firefox for the second time and at least for me, Firefox is faster then. Rendering and the developer tools however seem to be slower in Firefox indeed, sometimes significantly.