Firefox @fedia.io Firefox11 @fedia.io 1 yr. ago

Why does Firefox on Windows take so much RAM?

Using Firefox on Windows 11 and it is taking 10GB of RAM. it's slow and hangs so I cant use it.
Firefox on Android is awesome: fast and responsive!
Why does it take so much RAM on Windows but works very well on Android with 2GB of RAM?

3 comments

Is it a good idea to run Firefox for Android on my laptop instead of running Firefox for Windows?
If Firefox is using an unexpected amount of RAM, report a bug by following the steps below:

Open about:memory in a new tab.

Click Measure and save...

Attach the memory report to a new bug

Paste your about:support info (Click Copy text to clipboard) to your bug.

If you are experiencing a bug, the best way to ensure that something can be done about your bug is to report it in Bugzilla. This might seem a little bit intimidating for somebody who is new to bug reporting, but Mozillians are really nice!

If you prefer not to open a bug, you can instead reduce the number of content processes used by Firefox to a lower amount by going to about:config and changing dom.ipc.processCount.webIsolated to a lower number.
Some things in addition to the above can also consume lots of RAM:

If you are not using an ad blocker, some code used by some ad companies are so memory intensive that they eat lots of RAM rather quickly. The easiest fix for those is to run an ad blocker. (I personally use uBlock Origin with mostly just the default settings.)

Leaving Firefox open for several days can eventually eat a good chunk of RAM. If practical, it is suggested to close and restart Firefox every day. (I start up Firefox at the start of my day and shut it down at the end of the day.)

If the GPU driver isn't compatible with Firefox, "hardware acceleration" could both slow down Firefox (from crashing the thread trying to use the GPU) and end up grabbing a lot of memory in the process. The suggested fixes are, first, try to get the most recent supported graphics driver from the graphics chip manufacturer, and if that doesn't take care of it, turn off "hardware acceleration" (in Menu -> Settings -> "General" page -> uncheck "Use recommended performance settings" and then you can see and uncheck "Use hardware acceleration when available").