I deleted a range of old bookmarks, maybe a thousand. Then I ran Places Maintenance again, which ran MUCH faster BTW. Here are my specs from that .. > Statistics Database size is 10240 KiB user_version is 30 page_size is 32768 cache_size is -2048 journal_mode is wal synchronous is 1 History can store a maximum of 104858 unique pages Table moz_places has 6585 records Table moz_historyvisits has 216 records Table moz_inputhistory has 19 records Table moz_bookmarks has 5440 records Table moz_bookmarks_roots has 5 records Table moz_keywords has 0 records Table sqlite_sequence has 1 records Table moz_favicons has 1347 records Table moz_anno_attributes has 11 records Table moz_annos has 6 records Table moz_items_annos has 91 records Table sqlite_stat1 has 15 records Table moz_hosts has 2451 records Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_inputhistory_1 Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_bookmarks_roots_1 Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_keywords_1 Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_favicons_1 Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_anno_attributes_1 Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_hosts_1 Index moz_places_faviconindex Index moz_places_hostindex Index moz_places_visitcount Index moz_places_frecencyindex Index moz_places_lastvisitdateindex Index moz_historyvisits_placedateindex Index moz_historyvisits_fromindex Index moz_historyvisits_dateindex Index moz_bookmarks_itemindex Index moz_bookmarks_parentindex Index moz_bookmarks_itemlastmodifiedindex Index moz_places_url_uniqueindex Index moz_places_guid_uniqueindex Index moz_bookmarks_guid_uniqueindex Index moz_annos_placeattributeindex Index moz_items_annos_itemattributeindex Index moz_keywords_placepostdata_uniqueindex

I will have to see if over the next few hours if it's better. The CPU numbers are in the single digits and so far typing is fine. Mem useage is down by about 100k too. I hope it sticks. I usually leave FF up for many days at a time.

When I first start it up it's never been better. As time goes on though, it deteriorates into the same, but lesser slow mess.

Any ideas how to tell what else I can clear out of this file aside from bookmarks? Maybe just the history records, which I do not care about? I read about editing this file using sql.lite.

Can I go about deleting particular kinds of records with that?

If you delete, or better rename places.sqlite within a profile whilst Firefox is closed then; as explained in the article I linked to; on restart Firefox recreates it without any History. Remember Firefox has its own backup bookmarks it can use from within the profile, but it does not have any History it can use.

It looks like you may already have done that your places has very little History in it and lots of available space.

....
History can store a maximum of 104858 unique pages 
Table moz_places has 6585 records 
Table moz_historyvisits has 216 records 
Table moz_inputhistory has 19 records 
Table moz_bookmarks has 5440 records
....

I have looked at places with a sqlite editor, but never tried any serious editing of it & I think the structure will have changed since the last time I looked at it. No doubt you have discovered sqlite editors are available as Firefox addons.

I suggest you try a profile where you take out all places files and all bookmark backups. That is then very much like your working profile but has a fresh places sqlite without your bookmarks or History in it. Does that still get slower within a single session. If so it is probably not your places file causing problems.

By the way do you set Firefox to clear History when it closesdown ? That has sometimes caused issues in recent Firefox Releases.

OK, I think I have this figured out but just a few more questions ..

First, I did rename the places file and let it create a new one. I did this in the roaming folder only. Is that what I should have done? No change, BTW.

Should I have deleted or renamed the other places file .. places.sqlite-wal

Holy cow, I think I see the problem .. I have a YUGE (Bernie Sanders joke) webbappstore.sqlite file .. 21,894 and wal file is 705. If I delete them will they be re-created? What do they do? BTW, this whole problem seemed to start with an Amazon plugin so maybe this is the problem. Perhaps it scans every entry I type, causing this typing issue.

Hi again BreezyOhio, It is best to edit profiles whilst Firefox is closed. Normally places.sqlite.wal & .shm do not exist after a successful closedown. Yes if you want to start with a clean places.sqlite database delete all the bookmarks files and all the places.sqlite files.

The webappsstore.sqlite should be a temporary storage file, and again .wal & .shm files should not exist after a successfully closedown.

• See also http://kb.mozillazine.org/Webappsstore.sqlite

You can delete the files. Firefox will recreate as necessary, but obviously you will lose whatever information was stored. Renaming rather than deleting profile etc files leaves you a chance to attempt to reverse actions.

You do have some control over what websites can store

• See Site Information panel_permissions
• Also look at the network tab in about:preferences#advanced
  See Advanced panel - Accessibility, browsing, network, updates, and other advanced settings in Firefox_network-tab

You have an extensive list of Plugins but I did not notice an Amazon one. Is this something you may disable from Firefox ?

Answering my own questions here .. renaming the webappstore file means that FF will create a new one on startup. File size went from 21,984 to 545 kb. Sadly though no change in performance.

Wal files are temp files only seen during the running of FF.

So if I create a new profile again and move the places and cookies and plugin and formhistory and logins files will the new profile work?

Try to create a new profile to test if your current profile is causing the problem.

See "Creating a profile":

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Standard_diagnostic_-_Firefox#Profile_issues

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.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox

typing away at full speed right now after having unpinning all my pinned tabs (20). So far both memory and CPU usage is easily half of what it was though I still need more testing time.

In looking further I went into about:config and in sessionrestore settings I had two user defined settings .. max_tabs_undo is set to 20 upgradebackup.latestbiuldID is set 20160407164938

What could that be about? I'm not one that goes in and sets things for the fun of it and do not remember doing this at all, but that could have happened 5 years ago.

If unpinning tabs continues to fix things, is there a bug in pinned tabs, and should I not use them? I would very much prefer to continue using them unless it creates this kind of instability.

I guess a couple of more points .. perhaps that upgradebackup setting is because I use TabMixPlus, (the BEST plugin for FF in the world).

I also noticed as I started loading the tabs that would normally be pinned, memory usage did go up but cpu would rise and then fall. 2 of my pinned tabs are for promethease databases (genetics tests) on my local drive.

It MAY be possible that the new FF update doesn't like the Promethease databases for some reason. Any issues on that, perhaps?

Performance still good after doing away with pinned tabs but I still need to let it stew for a few hours.

Yep, I'm pretty sure it was the pinned tabs. I bet there's an issue with the latest release in regards to using them. Typing away just fine and the UI is still nice and crisp. When idling FF uses zero CPU now.

Most impressive.

UPDATE: It's been a couple of hours now and the performance is as sharp as it can possibly be. I cannot remember FF ever being this fast and clean, and that's with nearly a hundred open tabs! There is definitely a memory leak or such bug with the pinned tabs feature. Judging from the speed I have now, it may be a long standing bug that was elevated in this last release.

I am beside myself at how good this setup is. The mem use is around what it usually is, a gig or so, and the cpu is almost always single digit.

Mozzila had a specific project to get rid of memory leaks, but I think that has been wound down now because they solved the major issues. If it was a memory leak and you still have backups of the old profile that had the problem tabs you can test yourself.

It was probably from a specific website or maybe a specific addon. Basically a memory leak is where memory use increases continually and Firefox does not manage to clear it. There is a built in interactive memory usage tool use about:memory That has

• Expandable reports, with explanatory information on mousover of the items
• Options to save or compare (diff) reports
• Buttons to attempt to clear memory manually

That does enable you to see where memory is being used. Not only do you see it increase but if you do a diff you see which websites are using that memory and causing the increase. See

• Firefox uses too much memory or CPU resources - How to fix_memory-troubleshooting-tools
  • https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Mozilla/Performance#Memory_profiling_and_leak_detection_tools
  • about:memory - tutorial
  • A newer more complex console https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Memory {I am Not even sure it is on the standard Release)

A while ago AdBlockPlus was causing memory leaks. That is probably the most popular Firefox addon, and some years ago Firefox 4 had a serious regression causing memory leaks. The tools now available plus extra telemetry should have helped, but memory issues remain awkward and time consuming to troubleshoot.

The next leap will be multi process Firefox. That's not quite ready yet, it breaks too many things. It is hoped that it will only increase memory usage by about 10% but improve performance and security. What I think the average long term user will notice most is the ability to have single tabs crash without bringing down the whole browser.

Well here I am, after a sleep/resume cycle and more hours of running and still around 2% cpu, and mem useage has dropped a bit.

Just to be clear the website loads are exactly the same. If you want, and this is how strongly I feel about this pinned tabs issue .. I will repin the 20 tabs I had before, run a memory report, reboot, and run without pinned tabs, as long as this testing will go somewhere.

Perhaps there's something weird with my setup, but I doubt it. It should be evaluated with and without Tab Mix Plus too. Perhaps it's some code in there but I doubt it. And I really don't understand why FF doesn't package that into their default install, as an advanced feature.

Okay, so I did as little test with pinned tabs, re-establishing the 20 pinned tabs that I had, and did memory reports and have monitored cpu and memory usage via the task manager. I have to say that locked titles added very little cpu and no add'l memory. I did load all 20 tabs, as pinned tabs loads tabs on startup. Then I did a restart and the results were the same, so pinned tabs are fine.

I guess the file that stores the pinned tab settings needed a re-write. After hours of running there is no increase in cpu or memory. So it's all fixed.

Thanks to John and Cor-el for all your help. My FF install is better than it's been in years.

I TAKE IT ALL BACK .. after a few hours sitting idel I came back to the same old circumstance.

I did run a memory report .. here's the bad stuff .. WARNING: the following values are negative or unreasonably large.

   explicit/gfx
   explicit/gfx/heap-textures
   explicit/(19 tiny)
   explicit/(19 tiny)/heap-unclassified 

This indicates a defect in one or more memory reporters. The invalid values are highlighted.

I saved this report and the others I did as well. If you want them sent somewhere I can do, but I did not make them anonymous so I don't want to attach them here.

UPDATE: I unpinned all tabs and the memory issue did not resolve. I have now restarted FF and loaded all pages that were tab pages. I will wait to see if the tiny memory problem persists. I don't think it will but we shall see over the hours.

To refresh .. Last night i ran it in this configuration for 3-4 hours and put machine to sleep, then woke Windows this am, and ran it for a few hours without memory issues. After that and your last reply I decided to go back to pinned tabs.

Sorry to keep dragging this out . It appears now that pinned tabs are not the problem that I thought they were. I'm still testing but there appears to be a memory leak from WordFence, a Wordpress security plugin I use for monitoring 2 sites, which are part of my pinned tabs.

When in live traffic mode there appears to be a leak, depending on how much traffic my sites get, I think. Not sure, but I thought I should let you know .. I think the browser is great at this point. I will post the answer for anyone else stuck down this rabbit hole.

Okay, so my problem turned out to be ENTIRELY about a memory leak in a particular webpage plugin for two for my Wordpress sites. The Wordpress version is 4.5 and the plugin is called Wordfence, a security monitoring plugin. The version of that is 6.3.1.

As a fix I go to that webpage when I need to and then move off that page when done. It's a bit inconvenient and certainly it took me forever to find this. Complicating my issue was the number of tabs I keep active, which I wanted to keep.

I would have found this problem MUCH FASTER by using the about:memory report in FF. IMO, if you're having issues and you suspect FF, run the about:memory first, especially while the problem is occurring, then study it.