Thunderbird Memory Usage

You do have an issue. But there are some quick steps you can try before going all in. I have included them below the image.

Just for some comparison, I have Thunderbird on windows 11 with Windows defender for an antivirus. My 30+ Gb profile on the ESR version uses less than 1.5Gb and the daily build with a small testing profile and a couple of accounts uses less than .5 just happened to have chrome with 4 tabs and Firefox with dozens open when I made the screen shot.

To diagnose problems with Thunderbird, try one of the following:

• Restart Thunderbird with add-ons disabled (Thunderbird troubleshooting Mode). On the Help menu, click on "Troubleshooting mode". If Thunderbird works like normal, there is an Add-on or Theme interfering with normal operations. You will need to re-enable add-ons one at a time until you locate the offender.
• Restart the operating system in safe mode with Networking. This loads only the very basics needed to start your computer while enabling an Internet connection. Click on your operating system for instructions on how to start in safe mode: Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, OSX

If safe mode for the operating system fixes the issue, there's other software in your computer that's causing problems. Possibilities include but not limited to: AV scanning, virus/malware, background downloads such as program updates.

Thomas, have you made progress?

Thomas, have you made progress?

Sorry for the delay. I found a workaround by unchecking the "Check on launch" and "Check every 10 minutes" settings for one of my news accounts, which made fixing the issue less urgent. (I found it when the server was down.)

Matt said

You do have an issue.

My 30+ Gb profile on the ESR version uses less than 1.5Gb

It now appears that the issue has been fixed in version 153.0. Even after rechecking those two options, it uses approximately 1.8 GB. I see I didn't specify the version: it was last year's ESR version, I believe version 140.12.1esr.

Thanks to the developers who worked on this fix, including those who worked on the automatic reports, if these helped to fix the issue even before I reported it manually.

To diagnose problems with Thunderbird, try one of the following:

• Restart Thunderbird with add-ons disabled (Thunderbird troubleshooting Mode). On the Help menu, click on "Troubleshooting mode". If Thunderbird works like normal, there is an Add-on or Theme interfering with normal operations. You will need to re-enable add-ons one at a time until you locate the offender.
• Restart the operating system in safe mode with Networking. This loads only the very basics needed to start your computer while enabling an Internet connection.

None of the 4 combinations fixed the issue.

Click on your operating system for instructions on how to start in safe mode: Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, OSX

My operating system is Ubuntu. I assume the equivalent of "Safe Mode" is "Recovery Mode". I found the documentation in French, but I didn't find the equivalent documentation in English.