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Firefox's dirty little secret

OK, it's not really a secret. And for me, it's definitely not little. The issue? Firefox leaks memory. I mean, like crazy. It's getting really bothersome. Memory usage simply grows and grows while browsing, and closing all open tabs doesn't release the memory. I quickly end up with Firefox taking 150MB+ of memory, and at times end up using 250MB+ (although I try not to let it get that high). I'm forced to periodically shutdown the app and start fresh, and that's a serious pain - I practically live in the browser, and always have half a dozen tabs open.

Now, I love Firefox. It's a great browser. But the leaks are very frustrating, and although there are numerous bug reports on Bugzilla, there doesn't seem to be a lot happening on them. There have been several Firefox updates, but no fix yet. I see that 1.1 is on the horizon - I can only hope that the problem is addressed in that release.




4 Comments

  • 1) did you try to see if an extension actually leaks memory?

    2) did you file this as a bug in bugzilla?

  • 1) I tested in safe mode, with all extensions disabled.



    2) Follow the link in the post and you'll see that numerous people have already reported it. For examples, see bugs #249469 and #268138.

  • I also experience the ever increasing memory usage.



    I've found an extension called "sessionsaver" invaluable. It does exactly what it says on the tin - you can exit Firefox, and when you restart it, all the browser windows and tabs are restored. It also restores the previous page history for each tab.



    It also restores pages if Firefox or Windows crashes.

  • Steve,

    I've played around with SessionSaver. It's close to what I'd like, but changes a few Firefox behaviors in ways that I didn't like (for example, disabling the "warn on close with multiple open tabs" feature), so I uninstalled it. Perhaps it's time to take another look at it.

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