Firefox Community Forum

Been using Firefox for over a decade. But lately is has become so slow now. Often freezes up if more than two tabs are open or a website is in any way very complex. What settings and issues should I check? What has changed? I can run the same sites on Brave and Edge browsers with no issues or not nearly as slow and bogged down.

Hi. Recently, a old issue has comeback on my firefox. When I load youtube video, or a twitch livestream, at 60FPS, and I scroll down the page, the scroll "lags" until the player is off screen. By lags i mean it slows down the scroll and is no longer smooth. This is an issue I've had before and had successfully dealt with by accessing about:config and turning media vp9 off, but it has returned fairly recently, since I do not remember this issue happening before the last week, maybe two. Another issue, also on youtube, is that when I scroll down through shorts, sometimes after a couple of videos, the browser will visually freeze entirely, but will still allow me to click things on the page and also play sounds. After about 20 or so seconds, it will unfreeze and work normally.

I understand that this issue, atleast the 60fps scroll lag, has been an issue for a while and I have tried multiple fixes for it, changing various boolean settings, refreshing firefox, updating my Nvidia drivers to the newest via nvidia app which i should add has never been an issue for the past few months and has worked flawlessly and my nighmarish evening of troubleshooting ended with me completely fully uninstalling firefox and redownloading fresh, but the issue presists.

It should be noted that on other browsers, I have no such issue. Im not sure if mentioning this is some sort of taboo or persona non grata, but i also downloaded and tested Waterfox, and it also does not have this issue. The only band aid fix I found for the moment is that turning off Hardware Acceleration fixes the scroll issue, but it causes awful screen tearing, which is just as bad and distracting.

So to my understanding, 3 potential things are happening. This issue is just in my head Something on my pc is dying and I have a mechanical or software problem Or finally, there is some issue with a recent update, either with firefox or maybe some driver somewhere causing an issue. It just upsets me greatly due to this being a relatively new issue. As stated I have dealt with the scroll lag before and did find a permanent fix, and firefox has since worked literally flawlessly for months/years. But now, somewhere within the last week, maybe 2, something has gone wrong. I hope this gets fixed in an update, or if others have this problem there is a fix. Thank you.

Firefox was using GOBS of CPU, so I killed the master process and relaunched, but after launch I couldn't get any pages to finish loading. I then hoped to copy URLs from tabs and paste them into Floorp (which is working fine, as is Chrome), but I couldn't even snag the URLs (dominated by YouTube pages). I ran a full-system virus scan, finding nothing. The most recent Windows-11 update on 2026-Jan-15 isn't recent enough to be a likely causal factor. Firefox has about twice as many extensions as Floorp, but it was running fine until late yesterday (it's now after 3AM). I couldn't get the extensions page to load, so I've attached a screenshot of C:\Users\Mike2\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\oa7ou5xk.default-release-1715337056307\extensions There are several other profiles, but there's very little in them (one profile with a times.json & several profiles containing a parent.lock file)

Processor Intel Core i9-9980HK CPU @ 2.40GHz (2.40 GHz) Installed RAM 128 GB System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor MSI GT75 Titan 9SG

If I reinstall, will I lose all of my tabs?

I love Firefox and have used it forever. But its memory usage is killing me lately and I'm seriously reconsidering.... PC, Win11, Intel7, 16GB memory. (I'm typing this from Chrome)

I've updated, restarted, but it keeps maxing out and slowing my computer to a crawl. Somebody please tell me there's a fix pending?

Hi,

I am using macbook pro latest one, and when I use firefox and scroll down from my wireless Mouse to the bottom of the page, the scroll bar jumps to the top while working, is there a fix for this.

Thanks

I am using Firefox on my MacOS Tahoe. There is a persistent annoying issue where whenever I close (physically fold) my laptop screen and reopen it, Firefox will be frozen. It will be frozen in the sense that I am unable to interact with any tabs or anything until I manually quit Firefox and reopen it (which automatically reopens all my tabs), making it usable again. This doesn't happen every time I close and reopen my Mac, but it definitely happens the majority of the time and makes the browser hard to use.

I've attached a screenshot of what a new window looks like when Firefox is frozen. It looks just like a Firefox window when unfocused.

Notes:

• It doesn't entirely freeze Firefox. In fact, I can "switch" to a different tab by clicking on the tab and then shutting and reopening my laptop again. The new tab will show on reopening but Firefox will still be frozen. This process can be repeated.
• I can pretty consistently replicate the bug by shutting my laptop, waiting 10 seconds, and reopening it. This will almost always result in the freeze.
• The bug still happens if I'm not focused on the Firefox window but on a different app.
• The bug doesn't seem to happen if I just lock my screen but don't shut it closed.

Things I've tried that haven't fixed it:

• Updating my OS.
• Restarting my laptop.
• Disabling hardware acceleration.
• Disabling themes and extensions.
• Deleting and reinstalling Firefox, including deleting the user data in the "Library/Application Support" folder.

Let me know if there's any more information I can provide or fixes I can try. Also let me know if I should go ahead and file a Firefox bug report for this. Thank you.

Firefox dropdowns, menus and popup menus do not appear after resume from suspend on Ubuntu 22 or 24 This has been happening for only the last few weeks. Even dropdowns on web pages do not appear. I can click the dropdown and cursor down then hit ENTER to change a dropdown's value but I cannot see anything while I'm doing it. On the menus, I can use hotkeys if I remember them but the menus themselves do not appear. Right-clicking to get a context menu also does nothing but it behaves like it did. If I right click something, nothing changes on screen but if I then click another link or button, the first click is swallowed to dismiss the non-existent popup.

Other apps on the system work fine including Chromium browser.

This only occurs if I start Firefox then suspend the machine and then resume from suspend. After resume, the menus, dropdowns and popups no longer appear.

I am running Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS on a Dell Optiplex 3050, Core i3-7100x4 , 16 GB ram, Intel HD graphics 630 (KBL GT2), Gnome 46, Wayland windowing system.

I tried Firefox safe mode, clearing the caches, etc. Nothing worked.

Do I need Firefox 78.0.2 (x64) and Firefox ESR (x64)? Also I noticed I have noticed a very slow startup. I have an old Dell Vostro 460 PC. I also did a Task Manager and noticed five Firefox process. Can I shut some of these down?

Thanks, Irv

When trying to do a search for a video in YouTube Studio, the search seems to freeze. Doing a similar search in Microsoft Edge works OK. This problem started happening several months ago. I've tried clearing the cache for YouTube pages.

why does Firefox cover the whole screen when it hangs? it covers the bottom row of icons which I use to switch to a different task while I'm waiting for Firefox to finish hanging.

I'm listening music from youtube and playing Guild Wars 2 in the same time. Tell me pls bc I think it's unnormal, why I see in task manager that Firefox is opened 12-17 times?...

Firefox quite often will remove, replace, add, or layer text as I use it. It has been doing this since I first downloaded it, and I haven't had it for long. (I will say that it isn't the first program I've seen do this. the only other program I've seen do this is Zotero.) I'm not doing anything weird with it, it just happens as I use it. Some of the screenshots I've submitted are of what I'm literally typing right now.

I've tried using troubleshoot mode, but it works just fine when I'm using troubleshoot mode, so I can't appropriately use that mode.