Firefox 56 and excessive memory usage (10+GB)

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jimnms
Posts: 17
Joined: June 23rd, 2009, 10:19 pm

Firefox 56 and excessive memory usage (10+GB)

Post by jimnms »

I have 16GB of RAM, and since updating to Firefox 56, I have noticed it wants to use most of it. I put my system to sleep instead of shutting down and generally leave Firefox running all the time. Previously, after 2+ weeks, Firefox never used more than 2-4GB, but now after a day or two, Firefox is using over 10GB.
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therube
Posts: 21685
Joined: March 10th, 2004, 9:59 pm
Location: Maryland USA

Re: Firefox 56 and excessive memory usage (10+GB)

Post by therube »

about:memory might provide some clues ? (but I am clueless as to how to make sense of what it shows).

Some are likely to say, does it happen if you restart in Safe Mode?
If that is feasible, that might be worth a shot.
If not, perhaps look into disabling all but "required" extensions & run for a while like that & see what happens.

Maybe reboot your computer.

Just yesterday, I had FF using 4-6-8 GB RAM, but more then that was 25% CPU usage (100% of 1 core).
It was running like crap.
RAM usage might not have been unexpected. (OK it was, but possible it was just because of what I had been doing?)
CPU usage, I could find no reason for.

Restarting FF, I was shortly back in similar situation.

Rebooting my computer (last time before yesterday was 144 days ago), seemed to have things running better.
Fire 750, bring back 250.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.19) Gecko/20110420 SeaMonkey/2.0.14 Pinball CopyURL+ FetchTextURL FlashGot NoScript
jimnms
Posts: 17
Joined: June 23rd, 2009, 10:19 pm

Re: Firefox 56 and excessive memory usage (10+GB)

Post by jimnms »

I rebooted two days ago when I saw FF using 12GB. When I made the OP, the system had only been up 2-days with Firefox running the whole time, and Firefox was consuming 10GB. The weird thing (at least for me) is that Firefox seemed to be running fine. It wasn't slow or eating up CPU. I had to open task manager to kill a locked up game and saw the high memory usage. I assumed it was the game, but after killing it, the memory usage didn't drop. That's when I saw it was Firefox. I rebooted after that.
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Reflective
Posts: 2283
Joined: February 15th, 2007, 11:13 am

Re: Firefox 56 and excessive memory usage (10+GB)

Post by Reflective »

Cold boot the machine using the Power Users menu which you'll see by right clicking the Start button. Shutting down the PC flushes the memory after which memory usage will return to normal.
Dibya
Posts: 6
Joined: October 5th, 2017, 11:59 pm

Re: Firefox 56 and excessive memory usage (10+GB)

Post by Dibya »

Hello Same happened with me .
katina128
Posts: 5
Joined: November 29th, 2014, 10:15 pm

Re: Firefox 56 and excessive memory usage (10+GB)

Post by katina128 »

Same thing is happening to me. It's been going on for months though, not just FF56. I'm so tired of it that I'm ready to get rid of it, and go to something else.
jrobodingala49
Posts: 1
Joined: October 13th, 2017, 1:35 am

Re: Firefox 56 and excessive memory usage (10+GB)

Post by jrobodingala49 »

Same here - laggy page scroll; flash video stutters; and a merciless memory hog - keeps climbing and never releases it. Despite the dire warnings fm Mozilla re. downgrading had no trouble installing Firefix V55.03 over 56 without unistall - working great so far... Not happy about plugins I use being made redundant fm FF 57 either.

Old version installs here:

https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/
janis1207
Posts: 5
Joined: July 20th, 2015, 12:36 am

Re: Firefox 56 and excessive memory usage (10+GB)

Post by janis1207 »

Sadly, this is what passes for normal behavior in Firefox these days. Started at around Firefox 29, and hasn't been resolved since. Firefox simply isn't any good at clearing memory after you open/close many tabs. Perticularly if they have been graphics intensive.
People are even writing add-ons (like Free Memory Button) to keep on top of this problem.
Why it can't be resolved in the browser itself is beyond me.
Brummelchen
Posts: 4480
Joined: March 19th, 2005, 10:51 am

Re: Firefox 56 and excessive memory usage (10+GB)

Post by Brummelchen »

please stop telling rubbish in other threads and try the given solution options above!
whining or writing down your opinion wont fix anything.
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therube
Posts: 21685
Joined: March 10th, 2004, 9:59 pm
Location: Maryland USA

Re: Firefox 56 and excessive memory usage (10+GB)

Post by therube »

Free Memory Button.

Only providing a "button".
Only doing what is natively provided by FF.
Only of minimal, if any value, IMO.

(While it may do something, its effects are not long lived, are not likely to make any appreciable difference to a particular browsing session.)
Fire 750, bring back 250.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.19) Gecko/20110420 SeaMonkey/2.0.14 Pinball CopyURL+ FetchTextURL FlashGot NoScript
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MarkRH
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Location: Edmond, OK
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Re: Firefox 56 and excessive memory usage (10+GB)

Post by MarkRH »

My suggestion is if you've been using the same profile since version 20 or something is to start with a new profile or refresh your current one, especially when 57 gets released. That fixed a number of odd issues I was having, including it becoming non-responsive and using more and more memory after trying to import bookmarks. No such problem with a fresh profile importing the same bookmarks.
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