Reducing memory usage - Firefox: Difference between revisions
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For most users, Firefox doesn't use an abnormally large amount of memory. For others, however, Firefox's memory consumption is a major problem. This article discusses how to lower Firefox's memory consumption. | For most users, Firefox doesn't use an abnormally large amount of memory. For others, however, Firefox's memory consumption is a major problem. This article discusses how to lower Firefox's memory consumption. Typical Firefox memory usage reported by Windows is around 50-100 MB, with virtual memory usage at 100-150 MB. If you experience substantially more usage than this, there may be a problem, or you may just be viewing pages with large amounts of data. | ||
==Extensions and themes== | ==Extensions and themes== |
Revision as of 22:09, 21 December 2005
For most users, Firefox doesn't use an abnormally large amount of memory. For others, however, Firefox's memory consumption is a major problem. This article discusses how to lower Firefox's memory consumption. Typical Firefox memory usage reported by Windows is around 50-100 MB, with virtual memory usage at 100-150 MB. If you experience substantially more usage than this, there may be a problem, or you may just be viewing pages with large amounts of data.
Extensions and themes
Observing memory usage while Firefox is in safe mode will tell you whether one of your extensions or themes is causing memory problems. If you find a significant reduction in memory usage, you may be able to find updates for your extensions and themes or alternative extensions and themes that use less memory. Failing that, uninstalling the extensions and themes in an option.
Restarting Firefox
If you find that Firefox's memory usage continues to grow after long periods of being open, you may want to consider periodically restarting Firefox to bring the memory usage back to reasonable levels. The SessionSaver extension allows you to close Firefox while maintaining the pages you have open.
Settings that reduce memory usage
Changing the about:config preferences below may have an effect on memory consumption but may also affect performance or reduce functionality. Read each article for the preference's effects. Each preference includes an estimate of the amount of memory that can be freed on an average (512MB RAM) system by choosing the most memory-friendly setting.
Preference | Max memory freed |
---|---|
browser.cache.memory.capacity and browser.cache.memory.enable | 22MB |
browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers | 20MB |
config.trim_on_minimize (Windows only) | all but 10MB when minimized |