Firefox Community Forum

I've been using Firefox for a while, and while there are many things I like about it, it has always been a resource hog. In the past I could get around this by just killing Firefox in Windows Resource Manager and restarting, but ever since getting a new computer an upgrading to Windows 11, it's gotten worse. Every couple of days my computer freezes for 10 or more minutes, I'm having to do a hard reboot ever few days, and I'm even bluescreening about twice a month. I'm pretty sure Firefox is the culprit because killing it will usually resolve the issue.

I'm wondering if there is some way to put Firefox in a sandbox so it does not consume nearly all available memory and other computer resources. It is by far the biggest consumer of resources on my system and I do not want to dedicate 4GB+ of memory to an app that is just showing a couple of web pages and playing YouTube videos.

I'm begining to regret installing v146.0!

One of the most useful features of Firefox is the PDF editor and with this update, I've found that after annotating a PDF with several text boxes, clicking the text box icon (as shown in the attached screenshot) does absolutely nothing and it is impossible to enter any further text. The only way out of this is to refresh the pdf (after saving otherwise all changes will be lost) and then starting all over again only for the error to repeat itself making the editor almost unusable. Would really appreciate knowing how to work around this especially since to make my notes clearer, I change the color and the font size which is all lost everytime I have to refresh the PDF :-(

Incidentally, why are there so many updates? I prefer stable software that works rather than 'new features' that I never use!

Finally, Firefox used to have an amazing facility of making the Firefox private browser the default browser for Windows 10 but this was removed some years ago and can only be reinstated by changing registry keys. Everytime there's an update, these registry keys are overwritten :-(. Why was such a useful feature removed please?

Thanks in advance.

I have enabled the option to open the previous windows and tabs. I had one window that I always closed last as it had a lot of groups that are important for my work, so it used to open every time I started Firefox. Sometimes, even if I closed the window by mistake without closing other windows, I was able to get it back by pressing ctrl+shift+n.

But yesterday, I might have closed it by mistake and when I pressed ctrl+shift+n , it didn't come back. I wasn't able to access my window and now it's all gone. I don't see anything in recently closed windows in history.

I need those tabs back as they are very important for my work. they were a lot of tabs. I had many groups but now all are gone. I tried by using the previous.jsonlz4 in the sessionstore-backup by renaming it in the default-release profile as sesstionstore.jsonlz4 but still wasn't able to access my window.

I didn't clear my history as the tabs opened in the window still show up in the history.

Kindly help as soon as possible

Mozillers,

I depend heavily in my environmental and other work on Firefox and am grateful for its ability to restore previous tabs when my laptop, not infrequently, stops working abruptly.

Now the much-used bookmarks have disappeared. A search site states promisingly:

"To restore Firefox bookmarks, use the built-in backup feature by going to Menu > Bookmarks > Manage Bookmarks > Import & Backup > Restore, then select a dated backup or a manual file (like a JSON backup) to bring back lost bookmarks..."

But my Firefox's Bookmarks drop-down menu has no Manage Bookmarks option. PLEASE, what must I do?

Elsewhere I managed to find this file which apparently contains recent bookmarks:

"C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\unk14jlv.default-release-1647366062305\bookmarkbackups\bookmarks-2025-12-26_95_4IdGtYxezJpwuH1UIiT1bRwe1K6bcGO8rv0mqa9rUWU=.jsonlz4"

But attempting to open it with Applications\firefox.exe (default) accomplishes nothing.

FOOL-proof instructions would be wonderful. Thank you.

Two days ago, I made my first post to these forums. Now I'm being spammed with "Congrats on your first forum reply!" emails from this website. I am getting a new one every hour and a half or so. There is no obvious thing to do in the email to stop this. How do I stop support.mozilla.org from spamming me?

I have a local file I wish to view in firefox without starting a HTTP server (it's only docs for a crate I'm building) however Firefox is unable to open the file despite the file existing and having correct permissions. The file was in a separate mount (disk) to where Ffox is installed so I copied to to /tmp/ to remove that as a variable but still no joy..

➜ ~ file /tmp/index.html /tmp/index.html: HTML document, Unicode text, UTF-8 text, with very long lines (3556) ➜ ~ ls -la /tmp/index.html -rwxr-xr-x 1 ben ben 4208 Dec 30 14:04 /tmp/index.html

Am I missing some new setting which allows local file browsing using the good old 'file:///' protocol?

Thanks, Ben

OS Info: PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS" NAME="Ubuntu" VERSION="24.04.3 LTS (Noble Numbat)" VERSION_CODENAME=noble

F/Fox version: 146.0.1 (64-bit)

Whenever I try to access the Powerball website I get the following response -

The request is blocked. 20260116T144515Z-17584c64c9f58vrnhC1MIAm1t80000000t4g00000000rcec

I have no issue with other browsers.

Thanks Gary

Hi there!

I'm a long time user of Firefox, on and off since roughly 2004.

I just saw the Mozilla blog post about Anthony Enzor-Demeo taking over as Mozilla's CEO this morning and am writing here in an attempt to find a way to reach out to anyone within the Mozilla Foundation regarding the direction the Firefox application has been headed, and try to make myself and similar minds within the Firefox community heard about the changes that Mozilla has made to its policies and direction.

In February 27th of this year, Mozilla changed Firefox's ToS and Privacy Notices to incorporate legally binding policies for the application and strip it of its original privacy-first, open-source nature. This, while not a deterministic factor in how the application operates; illustrates a sudden, outward and hostile stance towards its existing user-base who is most commonly comprised of users dissatisfied with the lack of secure and private browser options available. Personally, I refuse to use Chromium-based web engines wherever possible and Firefox has been my one and only way to break from this "monopoly" of web engines.

Beginning to harvest user data for use by Mozilla and claiming ownership of any user content is immediately a massive breach of trust and contradicts what Mozilla as an organization has stood for since its inception. Going a step further to utilize this data to either be sold to advertisers as an asset, or to be used to train LLM's is exactly what I DON'T want to have happen with my data. I hate that this change happened and it massively reduced my trust in Mozilla and Firefox as a platform.

I never asked for this, Mozilla promised that it would never happen, and now I'm left betrayed by broken promises made with the express intent to turn a profit on my behalf as a user.

In Anthony's blog post, he mentions how AI has reshaped how people search, shop and make decisions in ways that were hard to see or understand. I outwardly disagree with this statement and feel as though AI has "infected" its way through society by brute force, being put in front of every user and shoved in every application. LLM's are not a catchall solution, do not help resolve issues in new and innovative ways, and are massively misused, causing excessive resource usage, gutting consumer markets, and decimating the tech industry by causing excessive amounts of data centers and global tech inventories to be purchased and built with no promise of delivery.

While I may want a fast, modern browser that is honest about what it does- I want that with no obscurity. I want a web engine that is open source, as lightweight and minimal in its design and coding as possible; and with no bureaucracy. I want to know how the engine works, to have the option to review its codebase front to back, to have my data stay as my data on my own local machine without providing it to a third party simply by using an application. Mozilla with its changes since February of this year have removed this as a possibility from their entire application suite.

I don't want AI in my browser- AT ALL. I have disabled it in every capacity that I can (frustratingly too, as these are all enabled by default and FORCE me to provide you my data without express consent.) and with every advancement Mozilla makes towards calling it "the future" and "the focal point", I lose trust. I don't want AI, I want the old privacy policy put back, and I really, well and truly and wholly, DO NOT WANT AI.

I NEVER ASKED FOR THIS, IT'S RUINING OUR LIVES, OUR SOCIETY, OUR PLANET, AND I WANT IT GONE.

Unless Mozilla stops this direction today, I will be seeking out new options, disallowing Firefox usage in any corporate environments within my jurisdiction, and actively informing friends, family and acquaintances of Mozilla and Firefox's fall from grace, and to utilize other user-centric options.

Thank you for your attention, have a great day, and I hope Mozilla can create action that will allow its users to trust it once again.

Hi, I have a pinned a website that will not show its icon (it won't when unpinned either).

Using the latest FF, Edge will show an icon. Is there a way to refresh FF and make it refetch the correct icon?

Thanks

Photo of the icon I do get.

Saying "you can turn off the AI" is NOT enough, Mozilla. Nothing is ever "turned off" unless it's completely removed. This is Microsoft's playbook BS; "but you can turn it off", but for some reason the system is always using a metric ton of memory, lagging and whatnot. You, of all companies, should know this and be better than that. Nothing good is ever force-installed and impossible to remove. Unless you all make it installed completely separately so people like me, who are a significant part, if not most of your user base, can not install it, nothing short of a full renunciation of the CEO will suffice to make we trust you again.

"Internet for People, not profit" is seeming more and more like blatant false advertising every day.

I have upgraded my Firefox to version 146 and I have a disruptive color of active bookmark in left sidebar. How could I change this color into moderate one - dark grey.

Firefox used to have my background colors, and on the latest update, my pull-down menu and tabs are robin's-egg blue. I can't figure out how to get my colors back, and I hate that color.

How the hell do I get back control over my colors?

Hello, Randomly but frequently enough to be annoying, Firefox freezes my entire laptop. I have windows 11. It freezes so badly that I have to hold down the on/off button until it goes off. I looked it up outside of Firefox help and, per suggestions, turned off the hardware accelerator. That seemed to work for a little while but now it's happening again with greater frequency. There doesn't seem to be any exact situation that causes it which makes it very hard to diagnose. But it's enough that I'm thinking of looking for another browser so any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

• Old laptop can no longer access the internet; corrupt Windows 10. Bought a new HP laptop. Have Sync turned on on both laptops but am not getting any favorites, passwords that I desperately need. What are my options given the old laptop can't connect.

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.

Over the past six weeks I have had two failures of Firefox [running current version 146.0 (aarch64)] in completing CC payment processes -- at least one involved updating an expired car, I can't recall if the other involved such a change or just entering a card.

I am using Firefox on a mac mini M4 Pro running macOS Sequoia 15.7.2 (up to date, fully supported, but not Tahoe the recently released new version of macOS). I am running Firefox with 4 extensions -- 1 Password, Print Friendly, Raindrop.io, and Authenticator. None were being actively used during these incidents.

In both cases when I switched to Safari and opened the sites, I was able to successfully complete the CC changes and payments. So it does not appear to be related to a problem in my internet connection.

My questions are: a) has anyone had a similar experience with Firefox

     -- particularly incidents related to online financial transactions

b) if so, have you found a solution c) regardless, do you have any suggestions about the cause of the problem or changes to try

Otherwise, my experience with Firefox has been excellent and I am very happy with it, but this is obviously a frustrating and time-consuming problem.

I have reported it to Firefox -- the response was that they will look into it but that my next step should to ask "the community" here.

My thanks in advance for any help or suggestions.

Bob

Hello! See the screenshot please: so, I downloaded à pay-bill, with Firefox (under ubuntu), in private navigation, and I get the file with a padlock-symbol at the end. What means that? What means that for me (on my computer), what means that for à friend, when I sent him the pdt-file (can he open it?). Nota: I understood that I can choose between "delete downloads when closing the privat window" or not. And I choosed not to delete them (but there appears this padlock-symbol). Thanks for your help! Michael from France

Hi Mozilla I hav got a problem with Firefox on Kubuntu 24.04.3. Everytime the computer is restarted Firefox crashes the first time it's started. That's not a big problem, starting Firefox again don't take long. But the problems is exceeding. If i start Firefox by clicking a link in a mail in Thunderbird. And Firefox has not yet been started, It crashes, but now it's also invaliding the Task bar on the screen where Firefox was started. Invaliding means that I cannot start apps from that screens taskbar, and the clock has stalled, none of the tools works etc. The only possibility solution I have been able to figure out, is restart (It's like going back to Win 98). Sometimes I am able to start a app from that invalid taskbar. But it's not the one app that i clicked on. Even though I can trigger it via Thunderbird, the invaliding of the taskbar will occur after a while. And I have to restart. I am not sure if this is the right place to post. But Firefox is always involved, but maybe Thunderbird or Ubuntu was the right place? Every time Firefox crashes there is send a crash report to Mozilla, but is has been going on for a while, so i guess that nobody is looking at the crash report. If I use Chromium instead of Firefox I don't see the problem.