5 ms·

Anecdotally, Firefox has always been faster than Chrome on MacOS for me. Great to see it’s only getting even better.

by dt2m 3y ago

londons_explore 3y ago
Try clearing your profile. Turns out having years of history, extensions, and a multi-gigabyte cache makes any browser slow.
- Avamander 3y ago
  Chrome automatically prunes history for quite a while now. Which I personally dislike, as I sometimes need to find something I visited a long time ago.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    Firefox does the same thing too unfortunately, and it doesn't seem like it can be turned off. It's a real pita for the same reason. Needed to look at browser history older than a few months and discovering it's all been deleted (by Firefox) was a very unpleasant experience. Seems to be a needless data loss "optimisation" (sic), but I have no idea what the real world use case for that would be.
    - wackget 3y ago
      Not sure if I've done anything special but I've got history going back to 2021.
      - justinclift 3y ago
        Interesting. That gives me hope that there might indeed be a setting to change the behaviour. Thanks. :)
        alpaca128 3y ago
        There's a good chance an about:config setting lets you change it. FF has a ton of detailed settings but most are hidden. On my setup the "manage history" window goes back a bit over 6 months. Unfortunately the list entries don't show a date, so I can't give more precise numbers.
        svl 3y ago
        browser.history.maxStateObjectSize and places.history.expiration.max_pages (both accessible through about:config) should be the settings to modify. Do a web search for those properties to get more information on how they interact.
        justinclift 3y ago
        Fantastic! Thank you. :)
    - osmarks 3y ago
      I wrote a script (https://github.com/osmarks/random-stuff/blob/master/histretention.py https://github.com/osmarks/random-stuff/blob/master/histrete...) to dump a Firefox places.sqlite database to a separate SQLite database for long-term storage (I run it nightly). It seems to delete stuff based on some combination of visit frequency and last visit time. I suspect they need to do this to keep history searches fast, since I also separately hacked a bunch of `about:config` options to retain more history and they run quite slowly now, particularly on my phone.
- p-e-w 3y ago
  That's like saying "If your car runs too slow, toss out the back seats." History and extensions are there for a reason. And managing the cache is the browser's job, not the user's.
  - askl 3y ago
    You can also save some more weight by never filling the gas tank up to more than 25% capacity.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      But that makes high speed chases impractical as you have to keep stopping for gas
      - fullstop 3y ago
        You reminded me of this sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxY0-Qr_l78 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxY0-Qr_l78
  - throwaway104782 3y ago
    You still have to regularly give your (ICE) car an oil change in order to keep it in proper working order.
  - yborg 3y ago
    It's more like saying stop carrying around the cassette boombox and corpses of your last 3 dogs in the back seats.
steveBK123 3y ago
I found chrome on macOS to be a sloppy implementation Years ago I remember it was the one app that could reliably kernel panic my MacBook Strange stuff
- itsTyrion 3y ago
  how the shit does a browser just casually kernel panic the OS ‽ O_o
  - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
    Blind guess: GPU driver bug
    - steveBK123 3y ago
      as I recall, yes this was it
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    It was literally the only app that kernel panic'd any of my Macs in years, and it did it repeatedly on a few bad releases across a number of years. Given the number of devs at GOOG that presumably used Macs, it was astonishing sloppiness to have been let out the door 2012 there was ultimately an Apple driver issue, but only seemed GOOG was impacted / let the code out the door / couldn't be bothered to patch around in meantime https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/google-yes-chrome-is-crashing-macbooks/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/google-yes-chrome-is-cra... This was not the first or last Chrome MacOS kernel panic. Personally I recall them happening post 2017 as they were happening when I lived in an apartment I moved into around then. Searching around I see references to more of these types of incidents in later years like 2016 & 2019.

Anecdotally, Firefox has always been faster than Chrome on MacOS for me. Great to see it’s only getting even better.

by dt2m 3y ago

Anecdotally, Firefox has always been faster than Chrome on MacOS for me. Great to see it’s only getting even better.

Try clearing your profile. Turns out having years of history, extensions, and a multi-gigabyte cache makes any browser slow.

Avamander 3y ago
Chrome automatically prunes history for quite a while now. Which I personally dislike, as I sometimes need to find something I visited a long time ago.
- justinclift 3y ago
  Firefox does the same thing too unfortunately, and it doesn't seem like it can be turned off. It's a real pita for the same reason. Needed to look at browser history older than a few months and discovering it's all been deleted (by Firefox) was a very unpleasant experience. Seems to be a needless data loss "optimisation" (sic), but I have no idea what the real world use case for that would be.
  - wackget 3y ago
    Not sure if I've done anything special but I've got history going back to 2021.
    - justinclift 3y ago
      Interesting. That gives me hope that there might indeed be a setting to change the behaviour. Thanks. :)
      - alpaca128 3y ago
        There's a good chance an about:config setting lets you change it. FF has a ton of detailed settings but most are hidden. On my setup the "manage history" window goes back a bit over 6 months. Unfortunately the list entries don't show a date, so I can't give more precise numbers.
      - svl 3y ago
        browser.history.maxStateObjectSize and places.history.expiration.max_pages (both accessible through about:config) should be the settings to modify. Do a web search for those properties to get more information on how they interact.
        justinclift 3y ago
        Fantastic! Thank you. :)
  - osmarks 3y ago
    I wrote a script (https://github.com/osmarks/random-stuff/blob/master/histretention.py https://github.com/osmarks/random-stuff/blob/master/histrete...) to dump a Firefox places.sqlite database to a separate SQLite database for long-term storage (I run it nightly). It seems to delete stuff based on some combination of visit frequency and last visit time. I suspect they need to do this to keep history searches fast, since I also separately hacked a bunch of `about:config` options to retain more history and they run quite slowly now, particularly on my phone.
p-e-w 3y ago
That's like saying "If your car runs too slow, toss out the back seats." History and extensions are there for a reason. And managing the cache is the browser's job, not the user's.
- askl 3y ago
  You can also save some more weight by never filling the gas tank up to more than 25% capacity.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    But that makes high speed chases impractical as you have to keep stopping for gas
    - fullstop 3y ago
      You reminded me of this sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxY0-Qr_l78 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxY0-Qr_l78
- throwaway104782 3y ago
  You still have to regularly give your (ICE) car an oil change in order to keep it in proper working order.
- yborg 3y ago
  It's more like saying stop carrying around the cassette boombox and corpses of your last 3 dogs in the back seats.

steveBK123 3y ago

I found chrome on macOS to be a sloppy implementation Years ago I remember it was the one app that could reliably kernel panic my MacBook Strange stuff

itsTyrion 3y ago
how the shit does a browser just casually kernel panic the OS ‽ O_o
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  Blind guess: GPU driver bug
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    as I recall, yes this was it
- steveBK123 3y ago
  It was literally the only app that kernel panic'd any of my Macs in years, and it did it repeatedly on a few bad releases across a number of years. Given the number of devs at GOOG that presumably used Macs, it was astonishing sloppiness to have been let out the door 2012 there was ultimately an Apple driver issue, but only seemed GOOG was impacted / let the code out the door / couldn't be bothered to patch around in meantime https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/google-yes-chrome-is-crashing-macbooks/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/google-yes-chrome-is-cra... This was not the first or last Chrome MacOS kernel panic. Personally I recall them happening post 2017 as they were happening when I lived in an apartment I moved into around then. Searching around I see references to more of these types of incidents in later years like 2016 & 2019.