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Memory usage is worse than ever (58.0.1 64-bit)

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I run Windows 7 with 6 GB. Running approx. 40 tabs, Firefox is using about 4 GB and 7 processes just a minute or so after startup! This is completely unacceptable, and much worse than pre-Quantum Firefox. Googling, addons to show memory usage per tab from a year or two back no longer work. ???

I run Windows 7 with 6 GB. Running approx. 40 tabs, Firefox is using about 4 GB and 7 processes just a minute or so after startup! This is completely unacceptable, and much worse than pre-Quantum Firefox. Googling, addons to show memory usage per tab from a year or two back no longer work. ???

All Replies (4)

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As program is almost rewritten it will take time to fix. I will be better with updates.

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There needs to be a way for the user to specify a maxMemoryUsage setting.

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Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions ("3-bar" menu button or Tools -> Add-ons -> Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem.

  • switch to the DEFAULT theme: "3-bar" menu button or Tools -> Add-ons -> Appearance
  • do NOT click the "Refresh Firefox" button on the Safe Mode start window

You can try to modify multi-process settings to see if this has effect.

  • set number of content processes to 1 if it is currently set to a higher value (4)
    Options/Preferences -> General -> Performance
    remove checkmark: [ ] "Use recommended performance settings"

Note that the multi-process opt-in pref browser.tabs.remote.autostart.2 is no longer used in Firefox 58+. In Firefox 58+ only browser.tabs.remote.autostart is used, so you need to set this pref to false to disable multi-process.

You can open the about:config page via the location/address bar. You can accept the warning and click "I accept the risk!" to continue.

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There has to be some way to fix this: