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All firefox based browsers stop video playback if window/tab loses focus

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 4 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

lulyro
lulyro
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Hello, for some reason firefox and all firefox related browsers have developed a problem on my system. All videos and streams stop playing if the window/tab loses focus. This is not the first time this has happened but earlier this year using the about:config flag I will mention below the problem seemed to be fixed but now it is back and worse than ever. I have a symmetrical gigabit connection and the problem only occurs in firefox and it's related browsers, no other aspect of my internet is affected, just video/streams and only in these kinds of browsers.

I do have a bunch of extensions but all are ones I have had for a long time, years in most cases, they were not the cause of the problem before and starting in troubleshoot mode plus a fresh profile in a fresh instal confirmed they are not to blame now either.

To be precise about the issue, when I say the videos stop that is exactly what I mean, there are no lags, no buffering, no partially loaded video bar( where applicable), no tab crashes, no connection problems, no warnings about certain tabs or extensions slowing things down, nothing at all, the video simply stops.

I have tried 

- safe/troubleshooting mode to rule out any extensions
- with and without my vpn running
- doing fresh installs of the browsers/ complete fresh slate, revo uninstaller pro ran and using fresh profiles 
- found some suggestions for the about:config page, namely window_occlusion_tracking
- found some contradicting information about hardware acceleration but I tried both with and without and it makes no difference
- experimenting with different versions of firefox, so if you can see which version I am using as I post this, the reason it is not the latest version is because I have tried rolling back through older releases to find one that works, but have yet to suceed,

But no matter what I have tried I cannot get the problem sorted. Either I have that specific window and tab as the sole active window on my device or I need to click into it and either reload the tab or push the play button multiple times before playback resumes.

Open to ideas because i'd rather not have to resort to chrome, thanks

Hello, for some reason firefox and all firefox related browsers have developed a problem on my system. All videos and streams stop playing if the window/tab loses focus. This is not the first time this has happened but earlier this year using the about:config flag I will mention below the problem seemed to be fixed but now it is back and worse than ever. I have a symmetrical gigabit connection and the problem only occurs in firefox and it's related browsers, no other aspect of my internet is affected, just video/streams and only in these kinds of browsers. I do have a bunch of extensions but all are ones I have had for a long time, years in most cases, they were not the cause of the problem before and starting in troubleshoot mode plus a fresh profile in a fresh instal confirmed they are not to blame now either. To be precise about the issue, when I say the videos stop that is exactly what I mean, there are no lags, no buffering, no partially loaded video bar( where applicable), no tab crashes, no connection problems, no warnings about certain tabs or extensions slowing things down, nothing at all, the video simply stops. I have tried - safe/troubleshooting mode to rule out any extensions - with and without my vpn running - doing fresh installs of the browsers/ complete fresh slate, revo uninstaller pro ran and using fresh profiles - found some suggestions for the about:config page, namely window_occlusion_tracking - found some contradicting information about hardware acceleration but I tried both with and without and it makes no difference - experimenting with different versions of firefox, so if you can see which version I am using as I post this, the reason it is not the latest version is because I have tried rolling back through older releases to find one that works, but have yet to suceed, But no matter what I have tried I cannot get the problem sorted. Either I have that specific window and tab as the sole active window on my device or I need to click into it and either reload the tab or push the play button multiple times before playback resumes. Open to ideas because i'd rather not have to resort to chrome, thanks

All Replies (2)

lulyro
lulyro Question owner
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Troubleshoot information log

Also to be clear about the extensions, I should say that in my first post I was referring to the extensions I had in the latest version of firefox before I started rolling back through versions. The ones that you will see I currently have are ones I have been dabbling with as I hop from one version of firefox to another trying to figure out if there's anyway I can get things to work as I would like and be able to watch more than a couple of minutes of video at a time. These current ones are not the exact ones I had when the issue started nor are they the same ones i have in waterfox or librewolf

Modified by lulyro

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Not that you run an outdated Firefox 98.0.1, that is reported on this forum as Firefox 91 because you appear to have enabled "Resist Fingerprinting".

This could have been done by Librewolf since you mention this application, but Librewolf is known to make a lot of changes to the default Firefox settings what can lead to unexpected behavior/issues.

See also:

You can create a new profile as a quick test to see if your current profile is causing the problem.

See "Creating a profile":

If the new profile works then you can transfer files from a previously used profile to the new profile, but be cautious not to copy corrupted files to avoid carrying over problems.