Firefox Community Forum

When I first open Firefox I have noticed the past few days that if I try to click on anything on the menu bar right away I get a not responding error message and I have to end up shutting the program down. If I wait a few minutes the menu bar does work normally.

I am having trouble downloading documents. They never finish loading and if they do I cannot download them to a file. Also when I exit firefox it isn't closing correctly. It brings up the last session. It keeps telling me it is still running even though I am exiting.

I get screen tearing on videos or when i scroll on any website. Only happens on Firefox, I've tested Chrome, Edge, Opera.

https://streamable.com/80gxcm

Smooth Scrolling is Off. Hardware Acceleration is Off. I've tried toggling "gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.force-enabled" Firefox is up to date.

None of this has helped.

When I brought Firefox up about a week ago, it presented me with a survey, results of which were sent to Firefox developers. They asked several multiple choice questions about features, but they didn't ask a very important question: Would you use Firefox more if it used less system memory? I currently use Google Chrome for about 2/3 of my web browsing because Firefox uses up too much system memory. I would prefer to use Firefox most of the time, but can't, since it bogs down when memory usage gets too high.

The survey should have included a text input box so users could enter any comments for the developers, and the survey did NOT do that.

So, after completing the survey, I was disappointed that I couldn't comment on the most important issue I have with Firefox. I would like the Firefox dev team to try get Firefox's use of system memory down. A short while ago, I opened 4 websites in Google Chrome, then opened the exact same 4 websites in Firefox. The attached shows the memory usage of each browser.

I have 5 windows open in Firefox, yet only 1 of them is visible/accessible on the Windows Taskbar.

I know there are 5 windows open as Troubleshooting Information reports "Multiprocess Windows: 5/5"

Sometimes when I launch Firefox, the other 4 windows will be visible, and this current one will disappear. If I go to Recently Closed Windows and open that window, it will appear, but the other 4 will be hidden again.

Other times, I will launch Firefox and one window will be invisible, and it won't appear unless I close all the other windows, then it will suddenly appear out of nowhere.

I've been using Fire Fox for decades, but lately it is so slow, I thought there was something wrong with my Windows 7 ultimate. I've done full Windows reboot, to no avail. Then I see the internet t hat FireFox is starting to implement AI. I thought that may be the issue, but after looking into it, looks like that isn't an option with my old Win 7 OS. So if that isn't the problem, how can I find out what is bogging Fire Fox down? I keep a watch on my CPU usage, and the usage is going nearly to 100%, when it used to barely go over 10%. When I check the actual CPU usage, it shows as many as 15 or more items tied to Fire Fox.

Is this all a result of continued use of Win 7? I'm planning to move to Linux, but that will take me some serious time and effort. Gerald

I've disabled extensions, changed settings, and reinstalled multiple times, but Firefox won't quit stuttering constantly. Other browsers work fine on my computer, and Firefox doesn't seem to be using much memory.

OS: Linux Recently, firefox has been annoying me with not closing a tab when I click the X like normal. I have to right click and close it, or press ctrl w. I am unable to move tabs around, as well. I am not sure since when this next bit has been happening, but I am also unable to interact with many elements of the top bar. The only thing of the firefox ui besides the websites themselves that let me interact with them at the moment is the home button, the new tab button, bookmarked sites, and that box icon on the left corner that lets you look at previously closed tabs. My Firefox's version should around, I believe it is 140.5.0 ESR. Thank you in advance. Update: Upon a restart of firefox, it appears to be working again as normal.. However, the bit with tabs not closing when the X is clicked and not being able to move tabs around has been happening multiple previous times, and it may come back. Update again: The issue does come back after some usage. I'm using KDE plasma with Wayland. I will try what the answer asked, and come back later. Update: This seems to happen very randomly and is not reproducible for me.. It will go a few days being fine, then randomly freeze again. Has not happened under another user, at least not yet.

Firefox has been using more RAM and CPU on my system recently, especially with only a few tabs open. Is this expected behavior, or are there specific settings, extensions, or configurations I should check to improve performance?

Hi!

I've had issues with Firefox now for quite a while and they only seem to be getting worse. Performance is really bad, it's lagging while browsing, especially infuriating when typing as the letters come out at a stuttering pace. I've tried disabling extensions one by one, I've tried troubleshoot mode and experienced no major difference.

If I can't solve this soon enough I won't be able to keep using Firefox, as the experience is so frustrating. And it would be a shame since I've come to like it quite much.

Thanks!

Hello Firefox Support,

I am experiencing a consistent and disruptive performance issue that occurs immediately after certain complex web pages (particularly those with heavy scripting or dynamic content) have fully loaded.

The symptom is a temporary but complete freeze of the Firefox window, often lasting between 5 to 10 seconds, during which time the browser is completely unresponsive. This freeze is accompanied by a significant spike in CPU usage (often reaching 90-100%, according to Task Manager/Activity Monitor).

Details:

Trigger: The freeze reliably occurs right after the page status changes from "Loading" to "Done." I suspect it is related to post-load scripting execution or rendering finalization.

Impact: Any ongoing user interaction is halted until the spike subsides.

Tested Scenarios: I have replicated this on multiple sites, including heavy news aggregators, social media feeds, and complex web applications.

Troubleshooting: This issue persists even after:

Clearing cache and cookies.

Running Firefox in Safe Mode (disabling all extensions).

Creating a new, clean Firefox profile.

This severely degrades the browsing experience, especially when quickly navigating between tabs or starting a session.

Could you please investigate potential issues within the core rendering engine or script execution scheduler that might be causing these severe post-load processing bottlenecks?

Thank you.

Whenever I wake my mac from sleep, Firefox is unresponsive. I believe the app is not dead, just not repainting the window. Sometimes if I 'hide' Firefox window behind some other app window, then bring it back to top, it'll re-paint.

For a while I fixed the issue by disabling GPU usage in firefox. But now, even that isn't helping. Then for a while, removing and reconnecting the USB-C connection to my external monitor would fix it, but now that doesn't help.

Have to quit firefox completely and relaunch. Then the app is working again.

Using Firefox 146.0.1 (64-bit) on Mac (2.4 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9, AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 4 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB, 16 GB 2667 MHz DDR4, macOS 15.7.3)

I've used Firefox for years, but recently Firefox is unusable on Mac OS 15.7.2 because it's hogging all the RAM over time. I get a spinning beachball on my MacBook Pro. I look at the RAM being used and it's even over what I have in the computer. I have and always keep Firefox updated to the latest version.

After update tahoe 26.1 update on mac firefox keeps stalling are they fixing this before i switch? I have a lot of tabs and things here but if you keep freezing I am going to switch. Are they fixing this? I already did all the things you suggest online. It freezes, and I can't keep this up?

i run Firefox on Win11. When i go to a website, and open several tabs, e.g., 10 or more, firefox just sits there and no longer works on that site. Basically Firefox is becoming quite worthless as a browser for me. The reason i use it are the extensions. This is something that has happened within the last 6 to 9months or so. What is going on. Is there now some limitation of how many tabs you can open? The site with this problem is: https://www.bellazon.com/main

Anyone got any ideas as to what is going on here?