This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

Excessive Ram Usage

shabdsahni2005
shabdsahni2005
more options

Hello All! Hope you are having a great day!

Recently I noticed that the Firefox process takes about 36%(700MB) of my RAM. And this is only with 3-4 simple text websites.... For example: html-gmail, wikipedia.com, simple google search..... I am pretty sure that the entire source of these webpages can't take 700MBs

Also I have a single extension a simple "Tab Session Manager" which helps me save entire firefox session if i need to open them up later...

Is Firefox storing website data on my RAM to make websites load faster? Is there some way to limit this? as I may want to free up some RAM for other more RAM hungry applications.

I tried optimizing memory usage on "about:memory" but that did not help.

Thanks in Anticipation! :)

PS: I think the topic "network and security" is not appropriate, but this is my first question and I do not know how to change tags and topic after posting a question  :|

Hello All! Hope you are having a great day! Recently I noticed that the Firefox process takes about 36%(700MB) of my RAM. And this is only with 3-4 simple text websites.... For example: html-gmail, wikipedia.com, simple google search..... I am pretty sure that the entire source of these webpages can't take 700MBs Also I have a single extension a simple "Tab Session Manager" which helps me save entire firefox session if i need to open them up later... Is Firefox storing website data on my RAM to make websites load faster? Is there some way to limit this? as I may want to free up some RAM for other more RAM hungry applications. I tried optimizing memory usage on "about:memory" but that did not help. Thanks in Anticipation! :) PS: I think the topic "network and security" is not appropriate, but this is my first question and I do not know how to change tags and topic after posting a question :|

Modified by shabdsahni2005

All Replies (3)

FredMcD
FredMcD
more options

Start Firefox in Safe Mode {web link}

A small dialog should appear. Click Start In Safe Mode (not Refresh). Is the problem still there?


https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Firefox+is+already+running+but+is+not+responding

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-slow-how-make-it-faster

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-uses-too-many-cpu-resources-how-fix

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-uses-too-much-memory-ram

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-hangs-or-not-responding

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

700MB isn't that much for a basic memory usage.

How much memory do you have installed on your device if 700MB is already over 30% ? I would normally expect at least 8GB memory for running 64 bit Windows 10 (8GB is 4GB for 64 bit word size).

You can check the Firefox Task Manager (about:performance) and about:memory pages to see what takes up most of this memory.

Note that extensions also can contribute to the memory usage.

shabdsahni2005
shabdsahni2005 Question owner
more options

Thank You Cor-el and FreeMcD for pronto replies!

@FreeMcd, Doing that helped during startup and RAM usage was around 200MBs but then it rocketed up to 400MBs! Which is significant improvement but i still can't figure out why should it take so much..... Or may be I websites take more memory than I thought... Do you guys also have similar usage?

@Cor-el, Thats true, it aint so much of a problem of performance but, you can call me a "control freak", I just want to know where the memory is being eaten up is the extension or some local website storage? or some useless script which may or may not be of use to me. Also I am more concerned about some memory intensive usage time...

For example: If i were in a live contest/meeting, I wouldn't care that much if my websites loaded slower( maybe store their data on local ssd) but the other application couldn't be compromised...

Thanks again for helping me out....