Printing documents from Firefox is extremely slow compared to printing documents from Preview (Mac)
It takes an extremely long time for documents (e.g., PDFs) to print when I print them from Firefox (compared to printing from the built-in Preview app). How can I resolve this so that I can print documents directly from Firefox without this long delay?
Browser: Firefox 105.0.1 OS: macOS 12.6 Installed Addons: 7TV, BetterTTV, Facebook Container, FrankerFaceZ, Merge Windows, Tab Auto Refresh, TWP - Translate Web Pages, uBlock Origin
Solution choisie
You can file a bug report on https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/
It's helpful to give the URL of a PDF that is causing the problem if there's one that is unusually bad (and doesn't require a login).
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Does it take a long time for Firefox to render the PDF in the built-in PDF viewer? As far as I can tell, Firefox converts each page of the PDF to an HTML canvas (for display in the PDF viewer). When you print, Firefox sends those canvases to your printer as individual page images rather than text with PostScript commands. For best fidelity and performance, it would be better to print from Preview or Acrobat than from Firefox.
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer said
Does it take a long time for Firefox to render the PDF in the built-in PDF viewer? As far as I can tell, Firefox converts each page of the PDF to an HTML canvas (for display in the PDF viewer). When you print, Firefox sends those canvases to your printer as individual page images rather than text with PostScript commands. For best fidelity and performance, it would be better to print from Preview or Acrobat than from Firefox.
Thank you for the reply - Firefox seems to generate the PDF print preview almost instantly after clicking on the printing icon. Does this provide any additional insight into the issue?
I think the print preview is basically a mini-me of what is showing in the PDF viewer behind it. I think the time-consuming part is sending the full-page images to the printer.
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer said
I think the print preview is basically a mini-me of what is showing in the PDF viewer behind it. I think the time-consuming part is sending the full-page images to the printer.
I see - is there any way for Firefox/Mozilla to resolve this issue?
I don't know whether it is technically possible without major work.
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer said
I don't know whether it is technically possible without major work.
I see - is there any way to escalate this issue? It seems like something that should be looked into since other browsers don't have the same problem as far as I know.
Solution choisie
You can file a bug report on https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/
It's helpful to give the URL of a PDF that is causing the problem if there's one that is unusually bad (and doesn't require a login).