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.

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

When will Firefox consume less ram?

  • 6 iimpendulo
  • 85 inale ngxaki
  • 1 view
  • Impendulo yokugqibela ngu tpievila

more options

I use Mozilla Firefox as my primary web browser, it's excellent in almost every aspect except, it consumes too much ram.

Sometimes/most it eats up to 200-300 MB and it's not acceptable, will Firefox receive an update which will stop from eating so much ram?

I've looked for the tweaking to do in "about:config" it hasn't lower it down than the normal and also "Firefox Optimizer" it tells the user that it's consuming 400kb's but it's not true, only hiding the real facts.

As a everyday user of Firefox browser, I really want my number one browser to not be slow nor eat my ram!

This happened

Every time Firefox opened

== Since I started using version 3, as I can remember.

I use Mozilla Firefox as my primary web browser, it's excellent in almost every aspect except, it consumes too much ram. Sometimes/most it eats up to 200-300 MB and it's not acceptable, will Firefox receive an update which will stop from eating so much ram? I've looked for the tweaking to do in "about:config" it hasn't lower it down than the normal and also "Firefox Optimizer" it tells the user that it's consuming 400kb's but it's not true, only hiding the real facts. As a everyday user of Firefox browser, I really want my number one browser to not be slow nor eat my ram! == This happened == Every time Firefox opened == Since I started using version 3, as I can remember.

All Replies (6)

more options

I have noticed that that internet explorer 7, and iTunes suffer from the same problem, and each update consumes more memory!

more options

If you think 200-300MB is a lot, you don't have enough RAM to begin with.

more options

The current work examining memory usage is covered at http://blog.vlad1.com/2010/05/10/losing-my-memory/

more options

Ugg, many months later and it still eats up memory on my Netbook computer like nobody's business. I am seriously considering switching to Chrome after having been loyal to Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox for a very long time.

more options

Plugins and faulty extensions may be the real culprit. Try browsing in Safe mode or with just Flash plugin enabled and report back to us.

more options

Even in safe mode, Firefox 4 takes over 1500 megs of virtual memory and 800 megs shared. This is on a laptop with 2G ram, so it's almost half of actually consumed memory. I have a lot of tabs hidden behind Panorama, but those are not in active use so I'd prefer them not to be loaded at all at startup, only when I try to access them.