Firefox snacks RAM

[zille]

Hello,

my Firefox 67.0.1 takes too much RAM for my taste.
I have about 20 tabs open, AdBlockPlus, NoScript, HTTPS Everywhere and Web Developer as addons. Firefox took 5 GiB of RAM, leaving only MiBs room for open file caches etc.

I will monitor this issue with about:memory
Do you have any tips on reducing the memory usage of Firefox?

• Paul

[jonathon]

Given most memory use of browsers is due to the pages you have open you may need to change the way you use Firefox.

You might also read:

Troubleshooting Firefox

Introduction Almost 100% of the time, issues with Firefox are not issues with Firefox but issues with extensions or your configuration. This post sets out the basic steps to narrow down where the issue lies. Outline The usual steps for troubleshooting Firefox: Clear the browser cache Start in Safe Mode Start with a clean profile a) Start with fresh preferences b) Remove old security/key database files Before each of these, make sure Firefox is not running. Clear the browser cache If you c…

[cscs]

Also ABP is known to be heavy on resources in comparison to better adblockers like Ublock: Origin
Check with safe mode and/or with addons disabled to see if anything else is causing it besides your addons or particular pages...

For further tweaking FF have a look at the Archwiki.

Consider using something like PSD [profile sync daemon]

[zille]

I will take a look.
Thanks @cscs

[xircon]

Simple Discard Tab – Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox (en-US)

Works wonders:

264.9 MiB +  11.1 MiB = 276.0 MiB       WebExtensions
344.2 MiB +  35.5 MiB = 379.8 MiB       ff-devel
954.4 MiB + 104.8 MiB =   1.0 GiB       Web Content (8)

Wait 3 minutes....

261.1 MiB +  19.4 MiB = 280.5 MiB       WebExtensions
305.1 MiB +  41.2 MiB = 346.3 MiB       ff-devel
367.7 MiB +  60.1 MiB = 427.8 MiB       Web Content (3)

[jonathon]

Combine that with Panorama View and you can leave hundreds of tabs open with no effect on memory footprint.

[Gary75789]

A few suggestions – Install extensions “Better-Onetab” and “Tab Suspender” then
Shutdown and restart FF every 3 to 4 hours.

[nam1962]

Hi, I have 3 FF instances with 20+ tabs on each and no memory problems.

• I have none of these : AdBlockPlus, NoScript, HTTPS Everywhere
• I use Ublock Origin, Decentraleyes, Site Bleacher and... all Firefox personalized security settings.
• No need of auto tab discard or alternatives : from FF 67 on, FF manages itself idle tabs
• I use profile-sync-daemon to have my profiles RAM loaded
• All my installs use systemd-swap

I show my settings on this french tutorial (easily translated)

I use some add-ons on my pro profile

~]$ grep -oP '},"name":"\K[^"]+' ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.*default*/addons.json
uBlock Origin
Facebook Container
Tampermonkey
Dark Reader
Cookie AutoDelete
Decentraleyes
Firefox Multi-Account Containers
eID Belgique
Grammarly for Firefox
Wappalyzer
I don't care about cookies
CanvasBlocker
Dictionnaire français
ColorZilla
Français Language Pack
English (US) Language Pack
Lightbeam
Absolute Enable Right Click & Copy
Disable JavaScript
Chameleon
Tab Mix - Links
IP Address and Domain Information
Bookmarks Organizer
Font Finder (revived)
BuiltWith
Grammalecte [fr]
Link Redirect Trace
Bloody Vikings!
Bookmark Dupes
ClearURLs
Markdown Here
Resurrect Pages
masterpassword for Firefox
NoFollow
Laboratory (Content Security Policy / CSP Toolkit)
IPFS Companion
PassFF
New Tab from Location Bar
Mangools SEO extension
SEO Minion
Site Bleacher
Sleep Mode
What CMS Is This
W3Techs Website Technology Information
SEOInfo
Amplifier  AMP/Canonical switcher

[anon23612428]

You can reduce the number of processes FF uses, either in the Preferences menu or by going to about:config and setting dom.ipc.processCount to a lower value. I think the default is 4. This should reduce memory usage but probably not as much as you want, and it will reduce performance.

[cscs]

yeah - to throw in another stat here .. looks like I'm riding at about 600-700mb with 40 FF tabs open..
[includes some reddit/someimages/thisforum/archwiki/bugzilla/ddg/github/youtube]

[DarkWav]

If you absolutely insist on low ram usage, disable the browser memory cache and enable only the disk cache.
Warning: This will hit video playback performance pretty hard, especially when you've got a HDD.
set

browser.cache.disk.capacity

to

-1

and

browser.cache.memory.enable

to

false

in about:config
This will allow Firefox to use as many disk cache as it wants, but completely prohibits the use of RAM to store temporary browsing data.
Pros: Ultra light on resources
Cons: Eventually major slowdowns in certain categories.