Firefox using a lot of RAM

[Russell C]

My Task Manger shows Firefox as "Firefox (5)", and it is using over 500 mb of RAM. Earlier in the day with two or three tabs open it was using over 1 gb. Is this normal? And what does the "(5)" signify?

[LIMPET235]

Hi,
If you go to, Tools > Options > General & scroll down to Performance & UN check the "Use recommended performance settings" box
you'll see other options.
If you click the "Learn More" button, you'll ......learn a bit more.

You can select the number of processes using the "Content Process Limit" drop down.....provided you have a fast/er computer.
The default is 4, which should be adequate for most user.

[Russell C]

Hi Limpet,
I have made the changes you suggest and FF is using less RAM. Still over half gb though.

[LIMPET235]

&, does this have any kind of effect on your M/C, re; slow page load or ?
How much RAM do you have?

ATM, I'm running 2 versions of Firefox & together they are using well over 1 Gig of RAM.
I see no adverse affects from this.
Both perform quickly & load sites just fine.

[Russell C]

Hi Limpet,
I have 16gb of RAM so Firefox is not impeding anything.
My question was is this normal? From what you say it is within norms, just seems a lot of RAM for a program that is basically idling.

[Brummelchen]

500 to 1gig is regular, nothing to complain.

go about:memory and post measure result in > https://pastebin.com/

using adblock plus? using noscript? which antivirus? plugins?

[DanRaisch]

Whether or not 500MB is a lot of memory in use by a browser would very much depend on what pages were open in those two or three tabs. Animations or videos would use more than plain text pages (which are getting few and far between these days.)

[LIMPET235]

I really cannot say what the "normal" is.
If your M/C is working O.K., then why worry about RAM usage?
We have a heap of people coming here & questioning/complaining about it,
but it all depends on a lot of variables.
Sites they are on, running any videos, what extensions they are running, etc., etc.,
What their M/C specs are etc.

A FWIW...
My v57 is not being used & just showing a blank page.
It's "using" around 950 Meg in 4 Processes.

I just don't bother with it.

[Russell C]

Hi Limpet,
From what you say I agree that this is not worth the worry.
Btw, I have one tab open, this one, and the Task Manager shows 5 processes and 672 mb of RAM in use.
Thanks for your help though.

[LIMPET235]

Hi,
Why not change the Processes back to the default value of 4?
I don't know why it was changed.

Anyone know?
Does Firefox check the amount of RAM available or the Processor?

&...
You're welcome...

[Brummelchen]

setup here: up to 6 processes, running 5 of 6 - ups, 7of 6 ^^ dont know why - the more the better - for me - i know advantage from chromium.
currently <1gig with 7 processes where 1st and 3rd need most, the others are page depending. - now 8 processes.

no about:memory, no further investigation.

[Russell C]

about:memory pasted as instructed

[Brummelchen]

link please

[Russell C]

https://pastebin.com/

[TrueFalcon]

HP-Envy I7 quad, 12GB ram, 8.5GB used, Firefox showing 11 processes plus one for plugin-container.exe for a total of 4GB. Many other progs also running. No problems, everything is running fine. Firefox Nightly has 3 windows open, two with a single tab, the other with 61 tabs open. Oh - and I just clicked reload all tabs for the 61 - it took 12 seconds to complete, mem use climbed by 200MB or so during reload, but then it released that returning to 8.5 total GB in use.

If the memory is available, it's better to use it than swapping to disk even though I do have a fast SSD.