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Firefox eats memory which slows down my machine, gets beachball

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MAC OS 10.14.2 Firefox 64

Firefox continues to eat memory, whether used vigorously or just sitting. This causes the beach ball "wait" icon to appear for seconds when switching to/from another window or app or email

This one year old retina machine, with 8MB is slower than my 11 year old IMAC with 4MB

MAC OS 10.14.2 Firefox 64 Firefox continues to eat memory, whether used vigorously or just sitting. This causes the beach ball "wait" icon to appear for seconds when switching to/from another window or app or email This one year old retina machine, with 8MB is slower than my 11 year old IMAC with 4MB

All Replies (2)

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Go to Activity monitor and watch out for services which are eating up your RAM

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Try Low Resolution mode: https://support.apple.com/ht202471

Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions ("3-bar" menu button or Tools -> Add-ons -> Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is is causing the problem.

  • switch to the DEFAULT theme: "3-bar" menu button or Tools -> Add-ons -> Appearance
  • do NOT click the "Refresh Firefox" button on the Safe Mode start window