7 ms·

I love Firefox and use it all the time, but for the last few years one of my biggest pains is the OSX performance on my Macbook Pro. Is this close to be resolve

by olavgg 8y ago

I love Firefox and use it all the time, but for the last few years one of my biggest pains is the OSX performance on my Macbook Pro. Is this close to be resolved soon?

minedwiz 8y ago
It’s strange - I could have sworn that, for a while around where “quantum” was released, OS X performance was really quite good. I ditched it for chrome for a bit, and it even held up with my daily 20+ tabs.
bluejekyll 8y ago
What do you mean by performance? I’ve found Firefox to be generally faster than Safari and Chrome on my MacBook Pro. I generally find it to be more energy efficient than Chrome, but Safari is still king there. This is personal experience, no lab tests, etc.
epage 8y ago
I wonder if this is due to not using the native compositor which they are looking at fixing this year. See "Adding support for native OS compositors to WebRender" at https://pcwalton.github.io/2018/12/07/plans-for-2019.html https://pcwalton.github.io/2018/12/07/plans-for-2019.html
acdha 8y ago
Are you using a non-native display resolution? That seems to be the common factor for people who have significant problems. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042
- amimetic 8y ago
  A scaled resolution is now default on most MacBooks. I haven't noticed battery problems but certainly seen RAM usage at least double that of Chrome and considerably above Safari.
  - jacurtis 8y ago
    If you are worried about battery performance, I can personally attest that Firefox is better than chrome in terms of battery performance. Still Safari is the best in terms of battery endurance (its a VERY SIGNIFICANT difference). But then again its Safari, so you have to decide whether you want a capable browser (FF/Chrome) or a battery efficient one.
    - beezischillin 8y ago
      In my personal experience, other than Apple crippling the extension feature by moving them over to the App Store, Safari is a pretty damn capable browser. It's actually been rather interesting to see drastical improvements in it yearly, even the Mojave build's come with a serious performance boost. Firefox overall feels a lot slower than Safari with some exceptions. The only major killer feature I've noticed is the Devtools on FF.
    - untog 8y ago
      IMO Safari is a very capable browser. I switched to it long ago and found I didn't miss anything from Chrome. Experimenting with Firefox now because I love the containers feature, I hope we'll see it in Safari some day.
    - sotojuan 8y ago
      Safari is my main browser when I am not working with frontend stuff and it's perfectly fine.
  - TheForumTroll 8y ago
    Have you tested if Firefox use more RAM when low on free memory? Using unused RAM is better than not using it. Looking at amount of RAM used by an application is not a useful benchmark. Unless your are seeing swapping Firefox is doing The Right Thing.
JD557 8y ago
Regarding the other replies, I believe that Firefox is extremely slow in OS X only if you use a scaled resolution. That seems to be a known issue, but for some reason it's taking a long time to be solved.
- jamiek88 8y ago
  Scaled resolution is default on most/all retina MacBooks which is unfortunate.
  - samdixon 8y ago
    For me it is only slow if I go outside the default scaled resolution. On my 2015 13" mbp I use the default scaled resolution to get around the performance issues. Another work around if you want to use a non-default scaled resolution with firefox is to use firefox in non retina mode. I prefer not to use this as it makes the experience blurry. I do wish they would fix this issue though.
    - jamiek88 8y ago
      Oh ok, great. For me the default scaled works best visually and I don’t use an external monitor so glad I won’t have this issue. With the handoff working too I’m downloading tonight to give FF a fair shake.
diegorbaquero 8y ago
Had this issue... until this version! I'm using MBP 15 inch with Firefox 65 (Beta channel), it doesn't use as much CPU as it did before, and it doesn't suck up all battery. This is on scaled resolution of 1920x1200.
accatyyc 8y ago
Try Firefox Nightly. Runs super smooth on my Mac, and I think WebRender is what solves this for many people.
nicoburns 8y ago
It's definitely much improved in the last few versions (64/65). Probably still quite power hungry, but it's not making my fans spin up anymore...
lcnmrn 8y ago
It feels slow because UI is not native. Chrome, Safari, Opera have native UIs on macOS. I mean they are rendered by macOS instead of browser engine. You get 60 fps for every action which doesn't happen with Firefox. Maybe they should use a process just to render the UI.

by olavgg 8y ago

I love Firefox and use it all the time, but for the last few years one of my biggest pains is the OSX performance on my Macbook Pro. Is this close to be resolved soon?

minedwiz 8y ago

It’s strange - I could have sworn that, for a while around where “quantum” was released, OS X performance was really quite good. I ditched it for chrome for a bit, and it even held up with my daily 20+ tabs.

bluejekyll 8y ago

What do you mean by performance? I’ve found Firefox to be generally faster than Safari and Chrome on my MacBook Pro. I generally find it to be more energy efficient than Chrome, but Safari is still king there. This is personal experience, no lab tests, etc.

epage 8y ago

I wonder if this is due to not using the native compositor which they are looking at fixing this year. See "Adding support for native OS compositors to WebRender" at https://pcwalton.github.io/2018/12/07/plans-for-2019.html https://pcwalton.github.io/2018/12/07/plans-for-2019.html

acdha 8y ago

Are you using a non-native display resolution? That seems to be the common factor for people who have significant problems. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042

amimetic 8y ago
A scaled resolution is now default on most MacBooks. I haven't noticed battery problems but certainly seen RAM usage at least double that of Chrome and considerably above Safari.
- jacurtis 8y ago
  If you are worried about battery performance, I can personally attest that Firefox is better than chrome in terms of battery performance. Still Safari is the best in terms of battery endurance (its a VERY SIGNIFICANT difference). But then again its Safari, so you have to decide whether you want a capable browser (FF/Chrome) or a battery efficient one.
  - beezischillin 8y ago
    In my personal experience, other than Apple crippling the extension feature by moving them over to the App Store, Safari is a pretty damn capable browser. It's actually been rather interesting to see drastical improvements in it yearly, even the Mojave build's come with a serious performance boost. Firefox overall feels a lot slower than Safari with some exceptions. The only major killer feature I've noticed is the Devtools on FF.
  - untog 8y ago
    IMO Safari is a very capable browser. I switched to it long ago and found I didn't miss anything from Chrome. Experimenting with Firefox now because I love the containers feature, I hope we'll see it in Safari some day.
  - sotojuan 8y ago
    Safari is my main browser when I am not working with frontend stuff and it's perfectly fine.
- TheForumTroll 8y ago
  Have you tested if Firefox use more RAM when low on free memory? Using unused RAM is better than not using it. Looking at amount of RAM used by an application is not a useful benchmark. Unless your are seeing swapping Firefox is doing The Right Thing.

JD557 8y ago

Regarding the other replies, I believe that Firefox is extremely slow in OS X only if you use a scaled resolution. That seems to be a known issue, but for some reason it's taking a long time to be solved.

jamiek88 8y ago
Scaled resolution is default on most/all retina MacBooks which is unfortunate.
- samdixon 8y ago
  For me it is only slow if I go outside the default scaled resolution. On my 2015 13" mbp I use the default scaled resolution to get around the performance issues. Another work around if you want to use a non-default scaled resolution with firefox is to use firefox in non retina mode. I prefer not to use this as it makes the experience blurry. I do wish they would fix this issue though.
  - jamiek88 8y ago
    Oh ok, great. For me the default scaled works best visually and I don’t use an external monitor so glad I won’t have this issue. With the handoff working too I’m downloading tonight to give FF a fair shake.

diegorbaquero 8y ago

Had this issue... until this version! I'm using MBP 15 inch with Firefox 65 (Beta channel), it doesn't use as much CPU as it did before, and it doesn't suck up all battery. This is on scaled resolution of 1920x1200.

accatyyc 8y ago

Try Firefox Nightly. Runs super smooth on my Mac, and I think WebRender is what solves this for many people.

nicoburns 8y ago

It's definitely much improved in the last few versions (64/65). Probably still quite power hungry, but it's not making my fans spin up anymore...

lcnmrn 8y ago

It feels slow because UI is not native. Chrome, Safari, Opera have native UIs on macOS. I mean they are rendered by macOS instead of browser engine. You get 60 fps for every action which doesn't happen with Firefox. Maybe they should use a process just to render the UI.