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Why does Firefox use over 3 gigabytes of memory after only an hour's use?

  • 3 replies
  • 3 have this problem
  • 6 views
  • Last reply by James

DavidKidner
DavidKidner
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Since I bought my iMac in 2013, Firefox's memory useage has been steadily increasing. I'm also aware that successive updates and suggested 'solutions' have failed to solve this problem. Firefox is rapidly becoming unusable for more than a few minutes at a time . . . My OS is a bit long in the tooth (10.6.8), and my version of Firefox is also out of date (48.0.2). But after years of promises to fix this problem, I wonder whether newer versions would be any better?

My new iMac, with High Sierra, arrives in a few days. I'd like to use Firefox, but wonder whether my experience of the past few years will be repeated all over again . . .

Since I bought my iMac in 2013, Firefox's memory useage has been steadily increasing. I'm also aware that successive updates and suggested 'solutions' have failed to solve this problem. Firefox is rapidly becoming unusable for more than a few minutes at a time . . . My OS is a bit long in the tooth (10.6.8), and my version of Firefox is also out of date (48.0.2). But after years of promises to fix this problem, I wonder whether newer versions would be any better? My new iMac, with High Sierra, arrives in a few days. I'd like to use Firefox, but wonder whether my experience of the past few years will be repeated all over again . . .

All Replies (3)

user1929
user1929
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I don't think anyone here can know the answer to that for sure; 48.0 was released over a year and a half ago, and Firefox has changed a lot in the meantime. If you see the same issues with the latest version, please create a new question here and we can help you figure it out.

cor-el
cor-el
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You can check the about:memory page for more information about what is using this memory.

You can open "about:" pages via the location/address bar

  • "about:" is a protocol to access special pages
James
James
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DavidKidner said

My OS is a bit long in the tooth (10.6.8), and my version of Firefox is also out of date (48.0.2). But after years of promises to fix this problem, I wonder whether newer versions would be any better?

Newer Firefox versions will not run on that system. Firefox 48.0.2 Release and the 45.9.0esr were the last versions that still supported the old Mac OSX 10.6, 10.7. 10.8. Firefox versions from 53.0 to current requires OSX 10.9 or later.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-osx - Firefox support has ended for Mac OS X 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8

Firefox 45.9.0esr will be the most up to date version with security fixes that will run on OS X 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8.

http://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/45.9.0esr/mac/ http://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/45.9.0esr/mac/en-US/

The Firefox 48.0.2 was released August 24, 2016 and is missing several security updates that the Firefox 45.9.0esr released on April 19, 2017 has.