Firefox Community Forum

For the past few months, I have had a problem with my computer - it seems to try to write to a hard disk (sounds like whirring ) and the keyboard freezes up for a few minutes, when whirring in the computer stops. I have taken the computer to Geek Squad two times and they said they found it, but it still happens.

I have just tried Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge and I haven't noticed it. Is this a problem with Firefox or just coincidence?

Mozilla Firefox freezes for 5 to 6 seconds when downloading / saving files or changing the default "Save to" location.

Other programs (i.e. MS Word, MS Excel, Chrome) don't suffer from the same issue.

• I have mapped drives from my NAS on the same network.
• "Automatic Destinations" folder has been cleared
• Looking at the performance stats in Task Manager, CPU and memory usage values are normal.
• Antivirus / firewall software disabled to no affect

Here is the profiler.firefox.com report: https://www.idrive.com/idrive/sh/sh?k=a2a6j1j3o3

Tor browser 14.5.8 (based on Mozilla Firefox 128.14.0esr) LibreWolf 143.0.3-1 Each uses 100% of a CPU thread on Linux Debian 13 (Trixie) with KDE, while internet is not accessible for hours. I have tried to open new empty tab and close single website tab in Tor browser, but that did not decrease the load. Firefox 140.3.1esr also uses around 100% when i count up all its CPU threads load.

Can anyone reproduce this? Maybe the browser needs to run for some time so the issue is reproducible. If you have idea what to try (i will not use different Firefox version), let me know exact steps.

Hello,

we are currently experiencing high memory usage issues with Firefox on our terminal servers.

Problem description: All employees work within a terminal server environment. When using web applications such as Vimcar (https://fleet.vimcar.com) in Firefox, we observe a very high RAM consumption. A single Firefox tab can consume 2 GB of RAM or more after being open for several hours. As a result, the terminal server becomes slow or unresponsive, and other users on the same server are affected. Since the terminal server allocates resources on demand, a hanging process continues to request memory until it eventually terminates itself, which severely impacts overall system performance.

Questions: 1. Are there settings or configuration options to reduce Firefox’s memory usage in terminal server environments? 2. Are there recommended best practices for running Firefox with memory-intensive web applications on terminal servers? 3. Is it possible to set memory limits per tab or per user session to improve stability?

Thank you very much for your assistance.

When I have Firefox and a word document open in my mini mac the Firefox application image is suddenly pushing out or sight any word document I also have open at the same time. Conversely, when I relocate the word document and seek to open it again Firefox gets pushed out. What is going on and how do I stop it?

I am not experiencing this problem when I have Safari and a word document simultaneously opened.

fred 10/14/25 at 1:20 pm PST [email removed]@gmail.com

Firefox opens full screen on my main monitor, one of three, but not the last-opened and before resizing to its last-used location and size. This three-stage process happens in a instant, interfering with live activity on my main monitor besides being really annoying. Hasn't always behaved this way. Any suggestions?

Thanks, Mike

Firefox 144.0 64 bit

I have been using Firefox for many, many years. As of late I find it is constantly slowing or freezing and when I check with taskmanager I find Firefox has opened and is running as many as 85 processes. I have tried the recommended methods of limiting it...but the performance options do not provide the ability to limit processes as set out in the instructions....and changing the browser.tabs.remote.autostart to false also did not work. If I can't fix this, I will have to stop using Firefox. I am using version 144.0

I have been using Firefox for many, many years. As of late I find it is constantly slowing or freezing and when I check with taskmanager I find Firefox has opened and is running as many as 85 processes. I have tried the recommended methods of limiting it...but the performance options do not provide the ability to limit processes as set out in the instructions....and changing the browser.tabs.remote.autostart to false also did not work. If I can't fix this, I will have to stop using Firefox. I am using version 144.0

The NY Times home page has taken to​ animating many of their illustrations. I would like to prevent that; they​ sometimes cause Firefox on my Windows 11 system to freeze for​ periods of varying length, and I simply don't want them. Their helpbot suggested restarting FF and clearing the cache, both​ proved useless. Changing the setting in Firefox to block audio & video has no​ apparent effect. Videos still play from the NYT page and the browser​ still freezes. Is there a way?

firefox is not displaying all characters on a page. Then, the missing characters suddenly get filled in. I have disabled all extensions thinking that is the probable problem, and it seems to work short term. But then it start up again. Have to reload a page, and sometimes THAT doesn't even work. Yesterday, I removed and reinstalled firefox. It was OK for about 1 hour, but now the problem is back. It only seems to be firefox (default browser). Now, hope this helps. I just got an email (Thunderbird) with no content except for a black block then appears and disappears. Have you ever heard of these things happening? P.S. As I type this, characters are starting to disappear....Oh! There back now. Chrome does not seem to have this issue, but I rarely us it (browser of last resort). Microsoft edge browser started intruding about 3 months ago. Comes up as my default browser? (I do not load it ever!). Things are getting really screwy. Hope you can help. P.S.S. as I get ready to send this to you, about 25% of what I have typed is no longer showing.

Hi everyone,

I’ve noticed that Firefox tends to use a lot of memory when I run several browser-based tools at once — especially web calculators or dashboards that update data dynamically.

For example, when I’m testing a lightweight web calculation app (something similar to a gratuity calculator that updates values in real time), Firefox memory usage slowly increases, and sometimes the browser even freezes if multiple tabs are open.

I’ve already tried:

Clearing cache and disabling extensions

Running in Safe Mode

Using hardware acceleration on/off

Still, the problem persists.

So I’d like to ask:

1. Are there any specific settings or flags that can help manage memory usage better for interactive web tools?

2. Does Firefox handle JavaScript-heavy calculations differently compared to Chromium-based browsers?

3. Any recommended performance tweaks for developers testing such tools locally?

Would really appreciate advice from anyone who’s optimized Firefox for this kind of lightweight, web-app testing.

Thanks in advance! 🙏 bold text

Your browser dead ass just doesn't respond when I click on it. I have a new mac mini 4 and have the latest update for firefox. it's absolute dogshit to be honest. I'm lucky if the browser lets me click on anything, eg., bookmarks, add-ons, history are nonfunctional. Also my tabs on the browser get squished together and superimposed such that 2-3 separate tabs appear as though they are one tab. I have never had an issue like this before when using firefox. I don't encounter the issue with safari or chrome, but I don't like those browsers. Do you have insight as to why firefox mozilla is suddently ass?

Hello! Today I stuck with problem in my system: after minor package update, hardware acceleration was broke. In past, I stuck with same problem after total pc upgrade (AMD -> NVIDIA GPU, another might be unnecesary), and somehow I fixed it, but i dont remember what exactly fixed it. Can someone please help me turn hardware acceleration on this time? My searching the key arround didn`t helped, but i found in about:support line which notes that firefox unrecognized my videocard etc. My specs: kernel: 6.17.1-zen1-1-zen driver: nvidia-dkms-580.95.05-1 videocard: GTX 1080 TI DE: gnome 49 with Wayland

Tips that ive tried: Tried to make all as wrote in archwiki Tried to install an nvidia vaapi implementor Made some random steps from internet, without effect(maybe thats why hardware acceleration doesent work??)

theres also about:support page attached

Running Firefox 140.3.1 ESR on Debian, lately I've been experiencing a bug when I have several instances of Firefox open, and multiple tabs open in each instance. After a few minutes of browsing and opening and closing tabs, I am unable to drag tabs to rearrange them (above the address bar). The "X" that is part of the tab also doesn't work to close the tab, and clicking the main "hamburger" menu icon (three horizontal lines) does not drop down the menu. If I switch to a different instance of Firefox that is already running, sometimes the "hamburger" menu icon starts working (sometimes not), and I am able to exit and restart Firefox, which works for awhile, and then a few minutes later the same thing happens again. Interestingly, when it's not working, I am still able to "right-click" on the tab and choose "close tab" from the drop-down menu.

I've been trying to discern a pattern, but have not been able to find a way to reliably reproduce the error. It often seems to happen when I'm using Reddit or Craigslist (maybe only more noticable because I often open and close a lot of tabs on those two sites). At one point I thought it might be related to opening a new tab for a site that had previously been opened in another Firefox window (instance), but that may be a false lead, because I haven't been able to find a way to consistently trigger the bug.

Thank you for maintaining the best privacy-respecting browser in the world, an indispensable tool for me.