RAM !!!!!!

[LameBrains]

What the heck happened to RAM usage on the last few versions of FF? I know they are playing around with multithreading and 64 bit support. I assume that is the issue. I only have 2GB of RAM in my laptop and it has never been a problem. FF ran fine and although it used up the biggest chunk of RAM by far of any program I run, it was still okay... my RAM usage rarely went over around 75%. But since the last few FF versions my RAM is regularly maxing out forcing massive and terribly annoying paging. I have to shut down FF regularly (which takes forever because the HDD is busy paging) and then restart it again. HOW ANNOYING!

Yes, I know I can disable my add-ins. And I have done that with a lot of them even though I didn't have to do that before. And yes, I have seen the list of things you can do to cut down on RAM usage. It slightly cut down the number of times I have to shut FF down and restart. But it still uses way too much RAM... and way more than before.

I love FF. But if this isn't fixed, I may finally have to switch to a browser that isn't such a resource hog. I mean a little bit is fine for all FF gives you in return. But with 2GB of RAM, this is unworkable!

[Grumpus]

If you open a tab and type "about:memory" you can pretty much detail what is actually using the ram in the way of extensions.
You can also use Free Memory to clean up things like some TSR stuff from programs, etc.
You have a couple of other choices.
Granted you might already know this but you may have an extension or add-on which is being a pain and this could help find it.
Other than adding some ram is there a way you could swap out the HD for an SDD with more capacity.
Some of your ram is still being allocated to Windows which shortens what is available.

[RobertJ]

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FWIW - I have 13 tabs open on FF53 and RAM use is 413M. Out of that my 18 add-ons are using about 11M.

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[LameBrains]

Thank you. Good info all around. about:memory is excellent. Hopefully it will help me track down what is going on. I'll have to study the results. I've shut down a bunch of my add-ons (including a bunch I don't really want to shut down), have about 11 active at the moment. Even with nothing but the about:memory tab open, the memory usage goes as high as 800MB. It seems to vary up and down between around 600 and 800 every time I refresh it even though I am not doing anything else.

That seems excessive and only leaves 1GB for everything else.

I can't add any RAM to this laptop, it's maxed out at 2GB... but yes, I could add an SSD and have thought about that for exactly this reason. Thanks for the suggestion.

Seems like there must be an add-on with a memory leak or something. I'll have to study the memory info. Whatever it is, it happened in the last few versions of FF. So if it isn't FF itself, then it must be an add-on that doesn't play well with these last few versions.

Thank you for the helpful responses!

[RobertJ]

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Your welcome. Let us know what you find.

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[LameBrains]

So I disabled all the add-ons and restarted FF and opened about:memory plus a single other random tab. Memory starts out at around ~145MB. I do nothing but wait a few seconds and refresh the memory reading and it starts climbing. Within a minute or two it climbed to the mid 400MB range. Then, it drops off dramatically to less than ~200MB and starts climbing again... all over the course of minutes.

So this is with all add-ons disabled and a single browser tab (in addition to the about:memory tab).

Here's a shot when it started going over 400MB:

[gorhill]

Here's a shot when it started going over 400MB:

I can tell you have been repeatedly clicking "Measure" in the about:memory tab. This is not a good way to measure memory to track down undue memory usage -- you ended up causing the about:memory tab itself to consume a whole lot of memory. The proper way to do it:

1. When you feel like there is a memory issue, open about:memory.
2. Important: click the buttons 1) "GC", then "CC", then "Minimize memory usage" (wait for the operation to complete between each click.
3. Personally, I repeat step 2) three times just to be sure.
4. Click "Measure" button.

This should give you a better memory usage report. Usually, the "Explicit" section should provide you with enough details to narrow down enough where is the memory issue.

[LameBrains]

Thank you, more good info.

Yes, when I was doing it I experimented with the "GC", then "CC", then "Minimize memory usage" buttons and noticed they seem to clear out memory.

However, while doing the procedure above, I only clicked to refresh the about:memory page maybe 5 or 6 times total. So while I am sure you are right that that runs up the memory all by itself, and that may explain why memory was going up even when I assumed I was "doing nothing," should FF be using 400MB+ memory with only two tabs open and all add-ons disabled even after clicking that a few times? Seems like maybe it's a lot, although I don't really know what it should be so maybe it's not a lot. If a few clicks of a tab shoots memory up that much, seems a problem....especially if you have a bunch of tabs active that you are busy using.

[makaiguy]

What are the tabs you have open? Do they contain continually updating/refreshing/rotating ads or other content that might be adding to the memory use over time?

[gorhill]

should FF be using 400MB+ memory with only two tabs open and all add-ons disabled even after clicking that a few times?

That's the thing, it depends what are in these tabs, and what the JS code in these tabs do. Any answer to this has to be on a per-case basis.

The pic you posted above shows that the about:memory page can end up consuming a lot of memory if one repeatedly just click "Measure". That is specific to that page. I am pretty sure the page behaves the same with previous version of Firefox.

On the other hand, if you load the front page of, say, Hacker News, the memory footprint for that one page is quite low, ~1MB, instead of the 245MB you saw for about:memory in your use case.

So any claim of high-memory usage is pointless unless it comes with detailed technical information supporting that the memory usage is undue. Carefully using about:memory to gather detailed techinical information is a first step, and even better, comparing detailed technical infromation with the exact same scenario with a previous version of Firefox is the proper way to accurately assess that memory usage in Firefox has unduly grown.

[dfoulkes]

I use Firefox 64bit with 30 active extensions...and of course a couple of those exts. are ad-blocking/script blocking types... I just looked at mem-use and it's running at about 500 meg ... with 3 tabs open... BUT, this profile has been running for about 5-6 days and over that time I've probably had 200-300 tabs open and closed... including vids....and maybe more than that.

The mem-use never hits about what it is now. So, one/two things that have not been discussed yet is what plugins and what AV product do you use... I ask about the AV product because it's been 'seen' around here where some AV products greatly increase Firefox mem-usage.

Another thing to try would be to reboot your PC into safe-mode with Networking active... then start up Firefox... check out some 'safe' sites and check your memory.

Anyway, the more testing to this type can at least narrow down stuff.