Firefox Community Forum

For a while now, I've been having recurring issues with Firefox desktop freezing and becoming totally unresponsive. If there's any pattern to what causes it, I haven't been able to notice it; sometimes it happens as soon as I open the browser, sometimes it happens after several hours, sometimes it happens twice in ten minutes, sometimes it happens twice in a few hours (however, I can count the number of days it's happened less than twice in one day in the past few weeks on the fingers of one hand). When the browser freezes, it becomes totally unresponsive - it doesn't fade or display "Not Responding", and Task Manager shows nothing abnormal, but it doesn't accept any input at all, any video or other animated material that may have been displaying freezes, and it can only be "fixed" by force quitting from the task manager and reopening. This is exclusively a firefox issue; other programs open at the same time as the browser freezes are not affected.

The only real lead I have as to what could be going on is that sometimes, things don't freeze all at once, but in a cascading effect. For example, tabs, bookmarks, etc. might not highlight when moused over, but still accept the clicks, or selecting another tab might causes the address bar to display the URL of the selected tab, but the screen displayed in the window will not change. Once these cascading changes start, they generally progress to total freeze before I have a chance to do much with that information (only a few seconds), but it's unusual enough behavior to be worth noticing.

Things I've already tried that haven't fixed the issue:

• Reducing the number of tabs used and otherwise reducing Firefox's system resource usage has not impacted the problem in any way.
• Running in Troubleshoot Mode has not had a consistent effect on the problem (the most recent time I did, the browser ran stably for longer than I could stand to use the internet without my ad blocker, but this is only one data point in an already inconsistent spread; prior instances of the problem have occurred in Troubleshoot Mode)
• Disabling hardware acceleration has not fixed the issue.
• The issue has persisted through multiple refreshes and at least one full uninstall and clean reinstall.
• The issue persisted after creating and switching to a new profile multiple times.
• The issue persisted after renaming places.sqlite
• The issue persisted after clearing cache and cookies multiple times.
• The issue persisted after clearing downloads and history.
• And very likely some other stuff that I'm forgetting, I've been trying to fix this on my own for a while now.

I always had one version of Firefox installed. I regularly update the software via Help >> About Still, after every update, I am getting multiple versions of Firefox listed at [Settings/Installed Apps] and [Control Panel/Uninstall or remove apps] on my Win11 23H2 22631.3593 (screenshot attached).

In order to get rid of outdated items from the list, I need to reinstall Firefox completely, but the same thing is happening with every update of Firefox.

Is there a way to resolve this and why is this happening?

I have 750mb Claro fiber internet, directly on the cable. I updated Firefox. My internet dropped to 300/340mb. I complained to Claro. They tested by connecting another computer to the cable. It gave 800mb. I installed Chrome. Speed ​​was 900mb. What to do in Firefox to regain speed?

tl:dr Here's the CSS to put in userChrome.css file. This is the "hides everything" option. See toward the end of this post for others.

1. navigator-toolbox:has(#PersonalToolbar[collapsed="true"]) {

 visibility: collapse;

}

+++

I was looking for a way to hide the nav bar and ran across this older forum topic (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1288181).

The solution shown here seems to be non-functional these days (early 2024), but it gets us in the right direction, so below is the code for us to look at.

1. main-window[chromehidden*="toolbar"] #nav-bar {

 visibility: collapse;

}

This is CSS, meant to be copied into a text document, itself placed in a folder called "chrome" that you'll need to create in your browser's active profile folder. Per step 6 in the instructions (https://www.userchrome.org/how-create-userchrome-css.html) linked by @jscher2000 in the above-linked forum topic, you'll also need to set toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets to "true" in about:config. If you don't know what about:config is, this is a good example to get started, but I'm not going to explain it here.

This CSS code selects the object with ID #main-window, with an HTML attribute "chromehidden" equal to "toolbar", and sets its CSS property "visibility" to "collapse". Apparently Mozila have changed the way they implement toolbar hiding, as this no longer works — this chromehidden attribute is nowhere to be found in the HTML that drives the Firefox interface, not sure if that's the place to look for it, but I think so. Anyway, we need to dig around in this interface HTML ourselves to see what changes when hiding the bookmarks toolbar, so we can adapt a new method to what's going on in the browser now.

To do so, we open a window within a window (chrome://browser/content/browser.xhtml) and run the inspector via Web Developer Tools. Comparing the HTML we see here with the bookmarks toolbar in each state (I used BBEdit to compare the texts), we see that the object with ID #PersonalToolbar experiences a change in its "collapsed" attribute when we hide/show the bookmarks toolbar. So in our CSS code, we shift our strategy to update the "collapse" CSS property for #navigator-toolbox whenever it contains a #PersonalToolbar object with its own "collapsed" attribute set to "true", which occurs whenever we hide the bookmarks toolbar. Somewhat surprisingly, this approach of updating the CSS property seems to auto-reset on its own when the "collapsed" attribute is set back to "false", which occurs when we show the bookmarks toolbar again. In other words, it simply toggles with the visibility setting of the bookmarks toolbar, and we don't have to write any further code.

If you're interested in hiding some other UI element when hiding the bookmarks toolbar, you can modify this code to do stuff like that (but to go beyond the below examples you'll need to suss out the object IDs, CSS properties, and HTML attributes — and maybe more, depending on what you're trying to do — on your own).

But for convenience, here's an example that hides just the tabs:

1. navigator-toolbox:has(#PersonalToolbar[collapsed="true"]) #titlebar {

 visibility: collapse;

}

Here's one that hides just the URL bar:

1. navigator-toolbox:has(#PersonalToolbar[collapsed="true"]) #nav-bar {

 visibility: collapse;

}

Since those are the only other two things in the #navigator-toolbox to be hidden, I suppose that means we now have all options on the table (at least the way I have the browser set up). Enjoy!

I use firefox (as mozilla) for decades ago. Never had issues, is super easy, fast and ...secure (?) A hacker last week have access on my Firefox, download ALL my saved passwords as CSV... as a plain TEXT and ATTACKS on my entire life!!! And the nightmare goes on and on... Stole my primary Google Account, Facebook, Instagram, Ubisoft, PayPal, Microsoft Account.... and other 20 sites beside this. For GOD sake, didn't you EVER think to place an extra security layer on this EXTREMELY SENSITIVE details??? A master password? 2FA or something else? Are you serious??? I'm so sorry BUT YOU'RE LOST MY TRUST!!!! Period!!! Give a change to your selves and PROTECT YOUR CUSTOMERS!

Hello,

My password saved are deleted every time I close FF. It used to be manageable because Google and other sites didn't require me to fill my passwords (cookies did the trick I suppose) but now I also loose access to gmail and Youtube every time I close FF. It's annoying to have to use 2FA every damn time. And keeping the passwords available.

I've tried every answer I found by looking around :

- tried to start in safe mode - disable hardware acceleration - I have no extensions

FF saves the passwords correctly (at least they appear in the saved password tab) but they are erased every time I restart FF. The cookies aren't automatically deleted (FF remembers my browsing history) but I need to relog into Google.

I getting frustrated.

Hi all; the subject line pretty much sopeaks for itself. Lately (within the past few days), whenever I open a new webpage, the sidebar appears. Until now it would only appear when I wanted it to, but now it's doing it on its own and it's annoying as ****. I've tried everything I can think of to stop this, so I'm giving you all the outstanding opportunity to help me remedy this aggravation. Many great thanks in advance!

I want to transfer all my bookmarks to another pc. I select export to HTML file and save to a flash drive. I insert the flash drive into the second pc then select 'import and backup' and 'import bookmark from HTML' . Then select the Bookmark.HTML on the flash drive and 'Open'. But no bookmarks ever appear anywhere that I can find. How can I get the bookmarks?

I restarted my Windows 11 laptop and got error message about user profile. Restarted again and looks like it was corrupted so deleted my my user profile and Firefox config and bookmarks are gone!

Still have all the files just a new user profile and the old one is gone?

Any help how to get Firefox bookmarks back would be much appreciated

When I start Firefox it appears in a small window and it takes several tries to maximize it. In the past I right clicked on the Icon and I had a choice of setting the window to open in Maximum, this doesn't seem available now. How do I get the window to open in maximum on startup?

Hey,

I have previously exported my bookmarks in an HTML file. When reinstalling Firefox, I tried to import them using the HTML backup file. It says that 309 bookmarks have been found, but nothing changes on the bookmarks bar, still showing the "Import bookmarks" bookmark. These are very important bookmarks I would really like to get back, can you help me please ?

Since yesterday, Firefox is crashing constantly. Any action taken on a page can cause it to crash. My cache and cookies have been cleared (every time I end a session), my computer has been restarted (now 20x). I have checked settings on MFF and all looks correct. I have used for years and never had this issue but have been using another browser since yesterday afternoon because this is disruptive to work. Anybody else having issues since the update 5/29/24?

Hi,

If I have an unloaded tab on right of the current tab and I close the current one, instead of going to the right tab, which is the unloaded one, it jumps to another tab which I'm not sure has what relation to it, it certainly is not the tab that opened it.

I removed every modified entry of "Browser.tab" in About:Config, installed "Select After Closing Tab", no result.

Thanks

The first time i enter fullscreen for the on the current monitor, the window is not filled completely. It fixes itself if i exit fullscreen and enter it again.

I did not observe this behaviour in 124.0

this also happened like 1 year ago. i made a comment about this in a bugzilla thread right here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1763981#c119

The fix mentioned in that thread is applied for me.

It does not fix it.

With these updates the way Firefox handles Outlook seems to get worse and worse. I don't have these problems if I switch to Edge. If I'm watching streamers on Twitch the streams pause while Outlook loads. It didn't used to do this. Something about that mail service is really hanging up the browser and it struggles more and more. There is always delay as it tries to load everything. The first email will take a while before it loads up. Sometimes if I close the tab and open a new one and try again it loads up faster. I've have all my cookies reset with this recent firefox update, everything got wiped for some reason, but getting them set up again doesn't help it. Clearing Cache hasn't helped it.

As the title says, it is very slow with Ublock Origin. I have refreshed Firefox and without Ublock it obviously works but I would like to keep the extension because it is the only one that works with Youtube Ads right now.