Firefox (Mac) has started hanging OFTEN
Lately FF has started hanging multiple times during a session. I've never encountered this before so it seems to be connected with the latest version. It's making FF very close to un-useable (I'm writing this in Chrome).
FF 54.0.1 (64-bit) Mac OS X El Capitan 10.11.6 (15G1217)
Frequent hangs, generally with the spinning beachball. FF is using a lot of memory (2GB), but this happens even when the system reports that it's not under memory pressure.
Can happen on the simples interactions - clicking the Firefox menu or moving the mouse.
I turned off hardware acceleration last night. That seemed to make an instant improvement, but the problem returned even before the end of the evening.
Thanks, G
All Replies (4)
Start Firefox in Safe Mode {web link} by holding down the <Shift> (Mac=Options) key, and then starting Firefox.
A small dialog should appear. Click Start In Safe Mode (not Refresh). Is the problem still there?
Thanks FredMcD. I've re-started in safe mode and I'll keep an eye on it.
FredMcD it's doing it again. Still in Safe mode.
FF memory usage has risen to 2.8GB (don't know how). The OS isn't reporting problematic memory pressure. FF CPU usage between 65-85%. However OS seems to be reporting plenty of free memory.
Modified by guystrelitz
When multi-process windows in Firefox is enabled then Firefox will use more memory and may be less responsive.
You can try this to see if it has effect:
- set dom.ipc.processCount to 1 if it is currently set to a higher value (4)
- disable multi-process windows in Firefox
You can disable multi-process windows in Firefox by setting these prefs to false on the about:config page.
- browser.tabs.remote.autostart = false
- browser.tabs.remote.autostart.2 = false
You can open the about:config page: via the location/address bar. You can accept the warning and click "I'll be careful" to continue.