4 ms·

For me, I have found Firefox to drain my laptop's battery more (Macbook Pro, 2017) compared to Chrome (and Safari). Once it changes, I would gladly go back to

For me, I have found Firefox to drain my laptop's battery more (Macbook Pro, 2017) compared to Chrome (and Safari). Once it changes, I would gladly go back to using Firefox.

fiblye 7y ago
Firefox has been hilariously bad for Macs for as long as I can remember. I refused to touch for over 15 years because it was incredibly slow each time I tried. Now that I'm trying to get out of Google's sphere of influence, I'm kind of forced back into it (Safari just doesn't feel right to me). Speed seems much better than it used to be and I can't really tell any difference between it and Chrome. Memory usage is an absolute disaster though. There are times where I only have 4 tabs of HN open and Firefox will be consuming over 9 GB of memory. Right now I'm sitting at 3.6 GB used for just a couple tabs of programming documentation. Madness.
- joelthelion 7y ago
  Is that actual memory use, or cache? If it's the latter, it's actually a good thing.
- novaRom 7y ago
  This is probably OSX issue, my FF works great on Ubuntu. I wish more users will install Linux on their Macs, it is eons better than OSX Toy.
  - CDSlice 7y ago
    Well, since Chrome and Safari both don't have this issue I doubt it is something intrinsic to MacOS itself. Also, how is MacOS a toy? It's literally a certified Unix system.
    - novaRom 7y ago
      MacOS is complete junk. If you want to get software security, hardware, and system stability problems then good luck. Latest MBP and Airs are total crap. Just go to nearest Apple Store and you can even see how it reboots randomly; or create a text file and chances are you will see different problems as you type.
- sfink 7y ago
  9gb for 4 tabs of HN sounds ridiculously wrong. (Thanks for mentioning what is in your N tabs. I tend to ignore complaints that only give the value of N. Nobody would say "Why is my computer running out of memory when I'm only running 20 applications?") Can you please file a bug at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org https://bugzilla.mozilla.org and include an about:memory dump? You'll probably need to report what addons you have too.
mmwelt 7y ago
They're working on it, it seems to already be a lot better in the nightly builds[1]. Hopefully the fixes will make it into FF70. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1429522 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1429522
GeekyBear 7y ago
Firefox still uses OpenGL to draw the window to the screen and also uses transparency in those windows, unfortunately neither of those things play nice with the scaled windows in MacOS. They are in the process of converting their code to use Core Animation instead of OpenGL to draw to the screen, which will help tremendously with the power consumption issue, so help is on the way. As a temporary workaround until all those changes land, you can have Firefox opt out of using scaled windows on a retina Mac by getting info on the Firefox app and then checking ”Open in Low Resolution” on the get info panel. Transparency in Firefox can be turned off by going to about:config, and setting gfx.compositor.glcontext.opaque to true.

For me, I have found Firefox to drain my laptop's battery more (Macbook Pro, 2017) compared to Chrome (and Safari). Once it changes, I would gladly go back to using Firefox.

fiblye 7y ago

Firefox has been hilariously bad for Macs for as long as I can remember. I refused to touch for over 15 years because it was incredibly slow each time I tried. Now that I'm trying to get out of Google's sphere of influence, I'm kind of forced back into it (Safari just doesn't feel right to me). Speed seems much better than it used to be and I can't really tell any difference between it and Chrome. Memory usage is an absolute disaster though. There are times where I only have 4 tabs of HN open and Firefox will be consuming over 9 GB of memory. Right now I'm sitting at 3.6 GB used for just a couple tabs of programming documentation. Madness.

joelthelion 7y ago
Is that actual memory use, or cache? If it's the latter, it's actually a good thing.
novaRom 7y ago
This is probably OSX issue, my FF works great on Ubuntu. I wish more users will install Linux on their Macs, it is eons better than OSX Toy.
- CDSlice 7y ago
  Well, since Chrome and Safari both don't have this issue I doubt it is something intrinsic to MacOS itself. Also, how is MacOS a toy? It's literally a certified Unix system.
  - novaRom 7y ago
    MacOS is complete junk. If you want to get software security, hardware, and system stability problems then good luck. Latest MBP and Airs are total crap. Just go to nearest Apple Store and you can even see how it reboots randomly; or create a text file and chances are you will see different problems as you type.
sfink 7y ago
9gb for 4 tabs of HN sounds ridiculously wrong. (Thanks for mentioning what is in your N tabs. I tend to ignore complaints that only give the value of N. Nobody would say "Why is my computer running out of memory when I'm only running 20 applications?") Can you please file a bug at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org https://bugzilla.mozilla.org and include an about:memory dump? You'll probably need to report what addons you have too.

mmwelt 7y ago

They're working on it, it seems to already be a lot better in the nightly builds[1]. Hopefully the fixes will make it into FF70. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1429522 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1429522

GeekyBear 7y ago

Firefox still uses OpenGL to draw the window to the screen and also uses transparency in those windows, unfortunately neither of those things play nice with the scaled windows in MacOS. They are in the process of converting their code to use Core Animation instead of OpenGL to draw to the screen, which will help tremendously with the power consumption issue, so help is on the way. As a temporary workaround until all those changes land, you can have Firefox opt out of using scaled windows on a retina Mac by getting info on the Firefox app and then checking ”Open in Low Resolution” on the get info panel. Transparency in Firefox can be turned off by going to about:config, and setting gfx.compositor.glcontext.opaque to true.