We're calling on all EU-based Mozillians with iOS or iPadOS devices to help us monitor Apple’s new browser choice screens. Join the effort to hold Big Tech to account!

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.

How to protect yourself from pages that take up huge amounts of memory?

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by zeroknight

YDUBINSKY
YDUBINSKY
more options

I often see that some pages take up too much memory. This critically affects the performance of my laptop with 8 GB of memory. However, I was unable to reproduce this behaviour. Now I have caught two web pages. 

https://linuxhandbook.com/sort-top-command/

and https://www.tutorialspoint.com/how-to-find-number-of-ram-slots-in-linux The first page quickly takes up 1-2GB and continues to drain memory. The maximum usage was 7 GB on a laptop with 16 GB of memory. This behaviour is the same in Firefox and Chrome. The second page quickly takes up 2GB, which is very noticeable on 8GB laptops. Why do these pages take up so much memory? Most importantly, how can you protect yourself from such an unexpected memory consumption?

I often see that some pages take up too much memory. This critically affects the performance of my laptop with 8 GB of memory. However, I was unable to reproduce this behaviour. Now I have caught two web pages. https://linuxhandbook.com/sort-top-command/ and https://www.tutorialspoint.com/how-to-find-number-of-ram-slots-in-linux The first page quickly takes up 1-2GB and continues to drain memory. The maximum usage was 7 GB on a laptop with 16 GB of memory. This behaviour is the same in Firefox and Chrome. The second page quickly takes up 2GB, which is very noticeable on 8GB laptops. Why do these pages take up so much memory? Most importantly, how can you protect yourself from such an unexpected memory consumption?

Chosen solution

The majority of the resource consumption in your examples is due to ads and trackers, the first one has 32 iframes which all load in separate processes. With Strict Tracking Protection enabled and uBlock Origin installed, that drops to just two.

Other ways to manage memory:

  1. Enable automatic tab unloading (disabled by default on Linux) by changing browser.tabs.unloadOnLowMemory to true in about:config.
  2. Reduce the number of processes per site by changing dom.ipc.processCount.webIsolated to 1.
  3. Install a system monitor utility so you can see memory usage at all times.
  4. Enable SysRq process signalling so you can kill the most memory-consuming process by pressing RightAlt+SysRq+F.
Read this answer in context 👍 2

All Replies (2)

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

You can check the about:memory and about:processes pages for info about all processes. See also the about:unloads page for info about the tabs.

zeroknight
zeroknight
more options

Chosen Solution

The majority of the resource consumption in your examples is due to ads and trackers, the first one has 32 iframes which all load in separate processes. With Strict Tracking Protection enabled and uBlock Origin installed, that drops to just two.

Other ways to manage memory:

  1. Enable automatic tab unloading (disabled by default on Linux) by changing browser.tabs.unloadOnLowMemory to true in about:config.
  2. Reduce the number of processes per site by changing dom.ipc.processCount.webIsolated to 1.
  3. Install a system monitor utility so you can see memory usage at all times.
  4. Enable SysRq process signalling so you can kill the most memory-consuming process by pressing RightAlt+SysRq+F.