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How to stop pages reloading (not refreshing)

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 12 views
  • Last reply by PsychFlower

PsychFlower
PsychFlower
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Hello!

I'll start by reiterating that my tabs are not refreshing, I thought this was what was happening and turned auto-refresh off using the "about:config" but it's still happening. I don't know why this happens but occasionally when I switch tabs the screen will be white with a loading wheel spinning in the center of it. This can go on for several minutes, which is annoying in and of itself, but it's even worse when someone tries to talk to me and I've got a tab playing audio and I can't pause said audio because when I switch to that tab it's reloading the visuals. This is really annoying and I don't know how to fix it, can anyone help?

Hello! I'll start by reiterating that my tabs are not refreshing, I thought this was what was happening and turned auto-refresh off using the "about:config" but it's still happening. I don't know why this happens but occasionally when I switch tabs the screen will be white with a loading wheel spinning in the center of it. This can go on for several minutes, which is annoying in and of itself, but it's even worse when someone tries to talk to me and I've got a tab playing audio and I can't pause said audio because when I switch to that tab it's reloading the visuals. This is really annoying and I don't know how to fix it, can anyone help?

All Replies (2)

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 10 Contributor
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I occasionally see the "loading" animation. I think it indicates that either that tab or another one in the same process (Firefox allocates tabs to several different content processes) crashed, or is hung, or is out of resources. When I see it, I usually know what page is causing the problem and can close that tab to free up resources for the other tab(s). But it may not be so obvious in your case where the problem is coming from.

As a workaround for the audio issue, can you use the mute button on the tab (up on the tab bar) to quiet it?

PsychFlower
PsychFlower Question owner
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I can mute the tabs but that means I have to rewind the video or audio file I was listening to when the conversation is over or the tab finally reloads (this often causes more ads to pop up and in some cases the video to reload). I also play some browser games and not being able to pause can result in failure of the objective/game/level, so I would much rather be able to click on a tab and hit "p" or spacebar to stop both the sound and the media.