Firefox keeps freezing, but only visually
For the past few days, Firefox has been freezing up. By playing around with it, I've found that it's still functioning, but it ceases to update visually. I'm not having the same issues with any other program on my PC, I don't see the icon to update Firefox, and I've restarted my PC a few times along the way.
When this happens, it's not just website contents that freeze, but Firefox's UI as well. Hovering a tab doesn't highlight it. Clicking the hamburger doesn't appear to open the menu. Etc...
If I have a video playing when this happens, I will continue to hear it, but the frame the video is on stays in place.
If I click on another open tab, it will still show me the tab it visually froze on, but if I end Firefox with Windows Task Manager & reopen it, the session saves the tab switch, so it's still taking mouse inputs. I've been able to do similar with keyboard inputs by clicking on the address bar and entering a new URL. I don't see anything as I type it, but after using Task Manager to close and reopen Firefox, the site I entered is there.
I can switch between open Firefox windows when this happens without issue, even on the same monitor, and if I pull up something else in front of Firefox and then switch to Firefox it will still display what was last visible in that Firefox window while the bug is occurring.
I have tried disabling add-ons, and actually found that disabling some of them made it happen *more* frequently, not less. Privacy Badger, Auto Tab Discard, & Ad Nauseum specifically. Switching from Ad Nauseum to AdBlock Plus or uBlock Origin neither increases nor decreases the frequency. My other add-ons, like Duplicate Tabs Closer, haven't had any effects on frequency that I can see. With all of my Add-ons disabled, Task Manager shows double the number of Firefox processes.
I tried to clear my history, but I can only select my last 1 hour of history, as clicking on the dropdown box to select another duration will cause the problem to occur & I can't see the other options in the box to select a longer option. The dropdown to select a topic for this question has the same issue.
These are some actions that risk causing the bug to start, but aren't 100% reproducible, and the list is not exhaustive:
- Trying to click & drag to pull a tab into becoming its own window or to move the tab into another window. (Firefox does not save this movement if it causes the bug, so closing and reopening it will keep the tab in the window it was already in.) This seems to work fine for some sites, but specifically tends to break if it's a YouTube tab.
- Mid-clicking to open a link in a new tab, if done on several links in a row
- Clicking on a UI element, like the hamburger button
- Right clicking on an image and selecting "copy"
- Right clicking within Firefox
- Opening Firefox
I have not seen the bug occur at any time that I was not actively providing some input to the Firefox program.
الحل المُختار
I can't enter Troubleshoot Mode if I can't click the three lines without freezing, which was the situation at the time, but I appreciate the thought.
I've figured out a workaround for now though, so I'm good. I'll hope for a fix in a future Firefox update. When it freezes, the X button to close a window will still work with a short delay. Closing one of the open windows will usually unfreeze it. I've turned up the number of windows that Firefox will hold on to the memory of and I cycle which ones are open based on what I'm doing at the time.
It seems like the number of tabs Firefox can handle without additional management has been roughly halved from what it used to be. I don't keep tabs open that I'm not using in some form, though sometimes their use isn't immediate.
An extension called Auto Tab Discard has been helping a lot, now that I have it in full use. (I installed it in the middle of the problem happening before, so it didn't manage to apply to enough of my tabs to be as big of a help before.) It puts idle tabs into the dormant state they should go into automatically, and I can occasionally rt-click to make all the tabs but one open tab dormant from that menu, so if I wake up a couple dozen tabs I'm using too close in time to one another, I can make them sleep before moving on to the next set. This does technically slow down how quickly I can go between tabs, but the added load time is negligible. I have to be more cautious when actively using a couple dozen or more tabs at once, but it's at least functional now.
A downside I still have is that if I open a few dozen tabs in quick succession... Freshly opened tabs that have never received focus seem immune to the Auto Tab Discard, so I need to click on each new tab to make them active enough to then make them sleep, which means I need to pause every few mid-clicks to do this.
If anyone else gets this problem, close your windows manually! If you hard close Firefox too many times with Task Manager, Firefox will eventually drop all but the last two windows you focused from its session data, and the lost windows have only a 50/50 chance of being in the closed window history (all or none). Closing them manually guarantees that they get into your closed window history to reopen them, as long as you set it to save enough of your windows. The default is only the last 3.
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Does it still happen in Troubleshoot Mode?
الحل المُختار
I can't enter Troubleshoot Mode if I can't click the three lines without freezing, which was the situation at the time, but I appreciate the thought.
I've figured out a workaround for now though, so I'm good. I'll hope for a fix in a future Firefox update. When it freezes, the X button to close a window will still work with a short delay. Closing one of the open windows will usually unfreeze it. I've turned up the number of windows that Firefox will hold on to the memory of and I cycle which ones are open based on what I'm doing at the time.
It seems like the number of tabs Firefox can handle without additional management has been roughly halved from what it used to be. I don't keep tabs open that I'm not using in some form, though sometimes their use isn't immediate.
An extension called Auto Tab Discard has been helping a lot, now that I have it in full use. (I installed it in the middle of the problem happening before, so it didn't manage to apply to enough of my tabs to be as big of a help before.) It puts idle tabs into the dormant state they should go into automatically, and I can occasionally rt-click to make all the tabs but one open tab dormant from that menu, so if I wake up a couple dozen tabs I'm using too close in time to one another, I can make them sleep before moving on to the next set. This does technically slow down how quickly I can go between tabs, but the added load time is negligible. I have to be more cautious when actively using a couple dozen or more tabs at once, but it's at least functional now.
A downside I still have is that if I open a few dozen tabs in quick succession... Freshly opened tabs that have never received focus seem immune to the Auto Tab Discard, so I need to click on each new tab to make them active enough to then make them sleep, which means I need to pause every few mid-clicks to do this.
If anyone else gets this problem, close your windows manually! If you hard close Firefox too many times with Task Manager, Firefox will eventually drop all but the last two windows you focused from its session data, and the lost windows have only a 50/50 chance of being in the closed window history (all or none). Closing them manually guarantees that they get into your closed window history to reopen them, as long as you set it to save enough of your windows. The default is only the last 3.
Modified by Sean