Lowering Firefox memory usage?
 

Are there any plugins or anything that will lower the memory that Firefox uses? It has always been a major resource hog but lately has been in the 1,400,000-1,500,000k range. Surely there is something that will cut down on this?

On a side not, tried Chrome for a while, but all of my data is in FF and I could never get it to import correctly.

try this addons:

AFOM - Memory Recovery & Retention For Firefox Only
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11922/

Memory Fox
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/53880/

I'm currently using AFOM, Firefox(20+tabs open) memory never exceed 250mb

Checking them out now. Thanks, much appreciated! :thumbsup

mine runs away too

I wonder why they don't solve this problem from FF...

In my opinion checking a load with yet another addon doesn't provide best results. Good old manual method:

• Enable all of them, then start to enable, one by one and watch CPU & RAM usage. I know lengthy.... but sometimes you need to do this to get rid of conflicting addons.
  
• Also check the Error console from time to time, some addons conflict between each other. For example Yslow addon creates errors within wordpress admin.

Wordpress admin in general doesn't like addons . Especially if you use some WP plugin that uses jQuery.

Actually this is often not the fault of Firefox, but the fault of addon developers.

Great question. I should probably close out one of the 40 tabs I have open... but would love the ideal solution also

st0ned, maybe I misunderstood you ...

Are you referring to FF memory leakage problem or memory consumed by addons?

Well, I didn't take a screenshot when it was really up there. Just restarted a bit ago and have minimal tabs open, but I am talking about this:

http://i31.tinypic.com/2va09z4.jpg

Earlier when I restarted it was over 1,500,000k. When it gets high FF lags out often, ill click a link and get the spinning circle (waiting icon). I am always researching stuff so hate to always have to close down tabs or restart every time FF starts to lag up.

install chrome :thumbsup

Stop using Firefox... :)

Well , as people above wrote, consider switching to Chrome.

If you want to keep FF (too customized), the most effective cleanup of FF is:

1. backup data of you old profile
   manual - http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/...ur+information , http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferri...file_-_Firefox
   with an addon - http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/
2. add a new, clean profile to FF: run firefox -p in command prompt or "Run", close FF
3. copy basic profile data (second link above) to your profile.
4. run FF with new profile, see if problem persists
5. if it works, start importing extensions and enabling them one by one and watch CPU and RAM usage. Don't forget plugins (Flash, Silvelight, etc) can cause crashes / memory leaks as well

This process is very lengthy, can take up to 2 hours depending on your profile settings, but if you need to keep FF and get this solved, this is the most reliable in regards to identifying problems.

A very good article on this is also http://kb.mozillazine.org/Memory_Leak

Sorry if I confused you , but this stuff is kinda extensive :)

i will check out memory fox, with 3 open tabs i get just 82MB OF RAM, running on WIN7, still low...

I installed AFOM and then firefox was not able to run anymore.

In my opinion that's fine, especially if the 3 pages use some Flash or Javascript.

thanks, I'll try the AFOM one out now :thumbsup

thanks, just installed AFOM...

AFOM didn't work for me. I installed Memory Fox instead :thumbsup

Firefox chewed up 2.7gb of my ddr ram. uninstalled and started using chrome and also opera for a few applications and the pc runs much faster and the browsers are much more stable than firefox.
Firefox in the past 6 months has run down hill, it has some serious crashing issues and the problem has never been resolved. Besides the apps it doesn't even come close to chrome, that btw is coughing up apps faster than anyone else now.

Holy fucking shit,and i though i with 1 gb of memory usage is big case.I remember there was a time when i was able to run firefox with billions of windows opened without problem,and now i have barely 10-20 windows opened max and i need to restart it every 2 day to make it work.

Unfortunately from seeing some pictures from developer events I noticed that many of the developers seem to be on Macs. This seems to hurt Linux and Windows users to a degree because it affects the speed at which platform specific issues are fixed. There exists all sorts of tweaks using about:config but the major problem is that doing a normal Google search will yield you mostly unusable data with a mess of techniques for various versions.

I gave up on it myself, for now. Somehow I have it to the point where it is usable and doesn't hog all of my memory beyond 25% of total system memory. However I still need to close it out, have it save tabs, and then reopen it about once a day or the interface can become extremely sluggish.

You might try using the development version of 3.7 and 4.0 (You will likely need to disable version checking for many of your extensions to work)

http://nightly.mozilla.org/ <---- Nightlies (latest development code each day)

Btw, to be fair I should point out that 64 bit will by nature use more than 32 bit so when doing comparisons with one another, keep this in mind.