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Windows 10: Alt-tabbing sometimes causes Firefox to freeze momentarily

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  • Last reply by Arcotash

Arcotash
Arcotash
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As far as I can tell, this has something to do with Firefox aggressively offloading stuff from memory to storage. When I alt-tab at times, Firefox completely freezes. Every Firefox window hangs on a single image and I am unable to interact with anything for a few seconds. During these seconds, I can see the memory % in the Windows Task Manager slowly climbing until Firefox unfreezes itself, so it seems to be loading stuff back into memory. For example, it'll climb from 55% to 70%, taking its sweet sweet time. I also see some disk usage with 'System' during this time.

This behavior occurs even when I'm active on the browser and at 50% memory. It seems to occur more often once I hit the 60% memory mark.

I'm almost certain that this is a Firefox-specific issue, because I can interact with any other program during this period. It is only Firefox that stops dead in its track.

Is there a way to make this behavior less aggressive? I'd rather not have my alt-tabs freeze every few minutes.

As far as I can tell, this has something to do with Firefox aggressively offloading stuff from memory to storage. When I alt-tab at times, Firefox completely freezes. Every Firefox window hangs on a single image and I am unable to interact with anything for a few seconds. During these seconds, I can see the memory % in the Windows Task Manager slowly climbing until Firefox unfreezes itself, so it seems to be loading stuff back into memory. For example, it'll climb from 55% to 70%, taking its sweet sweet time. I also see some disk usage with 'System' during this time. This behavior occurs even when I'm active on the browser and at 50% memory. It seems to occur more often once I hit the 60% memory mark. I'm almost certain that this is a Firefox-specific issue, because I can interact with any other program during this period. It is only Firefox that stops dead in its track. Is there a way to make this behavior less aggressive? I'd rather not have my alt-tabs freeze every few minutes.

Chosen solution

I've narrowed the problem down to my integrated GPU. Turning hardware acceleration off fixes the problem of freezing, but now I lose the benefits of my GPU. Regardless, it's better than having it freeze all the time. It's not an ideal solution, but I suppose it supposes the title of this post.

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Arcotash
Arcotash Question owner
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And I forgot to mention that this occurs on a laptop (Acer Swift X SFX14-41G), and it's unlikely to be an addon problem (Dark Reader, uBlock Origin, Youtube Enhancer, & LocalCDN). I've had this problem for a while, and it's occurred even while on a (relatively) fresh windows 10 install.

Given that I don't see this problem elsewhere on the forum, perhaps it's related to my hardware?

Another thingy is that I often use Firefox as a PDF reader or to browse online textbooks, and I use OneNote to take notes. This means that my focused window is almost always OneNote, even though I'm interacting with Firefox using the scrollwheel.

Arcotash modificouno o

Arcotash
Arcotash Question owner
more options

Chosen Solution

I've narrowed the problem down to my integrated GPU. Turning hardware acceleration off fixes the problem of freezing, but now I lose the benefits of my GPU. Regardless, it's better than having it freeze all the time. It's not an ideal solution, but I suppose it supposes the title of this post.

Arcotash modificouno o