Why is ff 54 so slow? I've been using ff for 10 years and this is the slowest version by far.
First of, thank you for supporting and updating firefox- my go to browser for over 10 years. I really appreciate your continual effort to make Firefox the best browser out there.
Over the last 3-4 years Firefox has been steadily getting worse. Ever since the decision to remove "tab groups" Firefox has been in the decline. I'm reading promises of speed, but slowness is all I'm getting. Things have gotten so bad with the latest release that I just had to log in and ask what is going on?
I read headlines like "Firefox is faster than ever", but it has never been this slow. It can barely keep 10 sites open at a time, while I used to have hundreds open.
I've been very patient as I really love Firefox addons and they are #1 (and the only) reason I'm not switching to Chrome. I prefer usability over speed, but this slowness is borderline unusable. Please stop what you're doing, or reverse it full speed. Don't make a Chrome clone. I'm not using FF because it is faster (it isnt and never has been), I'm using FF because of comforts addons bring to the table- the same addons you're actively trying to ban in an misguided effort to make Chrome clone. If I wanted a Chrome clone, I'd use Chrome. It's plenty fast and somewhat usable if you don't need tab groups- I do and this is the major reason I'm still using Firefox.
Thank you for reading.
Chosen solution
eodeo said
Disabling addons is not helpful
I asked you to try Safe Mode.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode
Safe Mode is a troubleshooting mode that temporarily turns off hardware acceleration, resets some settings, and disables add-ons (extensions and themes). If the problem goes away, that tells us one thing. If it does not, that tells us something else.
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Start Firefox in Safe Mode {web link} by holding down the <Shift> (Mac=Options) key, and then starting Firefox.
A small dialog should appear. Click Start In Safe Mode (not Refresh). Is the problem still there?
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-slow-how-make-it-faster
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-uses-too-many-cpu-resources-how-fix
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-hangs-or-not-responding
Thank you for your quick reply. Disabling addons is not helpful. Nothing works so it's very hard to test anything. Youtube auto starts, adds play everywhere, fire gestures I use to navigate tabs is not working and above all, tab groups isnt working since it has been demoted to a mere addon.
While not very useful, it does look like ff runs nice with no addons- however it is the addons, tab groups to be specific that are the only reason keeping me on firefox. It is so exponentially useful addon that having it compares to not having it as an Ms Word compares to pen and paper.
If it helps, my addons are: firegestures - for mouse gestures flagfox -to show location of a website forecastfox - weather forecast ghostery - no adds 1 ublock origin - no adds 2 tab groups- esential addon with no equal tin eye- to google images video download helper- to download videos Youtube no buffer- so youtube does not autoplay.
I have less addons as I remove a few that were incompatible with multi process. So I have less versatility now, but ff is still slower than ever. Multi process is still not enabled, even though I removed all the conflicting extensions. I'm using add on compatibility reporter to check this.
This war on extensions and extremely useful adons is clearly the reason why ff is so poorly functioning now. If I wanted sheer speed with bland extensions, I'd use Chrome. Please don't ruin the only thing that makes FF special- the immense versatility of the addons.
Also if it helps- my specs are win 7 64, intel i 7 4770k, 16gb ram with nvidia gtx 970. FF goes up to 3gb of ram before it becomes unresponsive. As soon as ff gets close to 1.5gb of ram usage- it gets very very slow. about 10 tabs is enough now to get it there.
Thank you for reading.
Chosen Solution
eodeo said
Disabling addons is not helpful
I asked you to try Safe Mode.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode
Safe Mode is a troubleshooting mode that temporarily turns off hardware acceleration, resets some settings, and disables add-ons (extensions and themes). If the problem goes away, that tells us one thing. If it does not, that tells us something else.
Thank you for insisting on safe mode. You were right that the addon - Ghostery in this case was the reason why ff was so slow.
I cant use firefox without addons. I need at the minimum "tab groups". Without that I might as well use Chrome or Internet explorer. They're both as good for the casual browsing.
Contact Ghostery support.
Thank you for the help!
FF is really fast and smooth now. Really impressive actually.
Good to hear. Safe surfing.
I had Ghostery enabled too, so I disabled it, restarted, and FF is still slower than molassas! Spinning balls, nearly FIVE GIGS or RAM sucked up, stalls, in other words this is horrible!
StevenCee Please go to the top of any support.mozilla.org web page and use the Ask A Question link; https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/new Select the product for what the problem is (Firefox or whatever).
Now select the category for the problem. At the bottom is Other.
Describe the problem in brief. Then press <enter>. The website will display any prior posts that might help you. If nothing on the list can help, at the bottom press the button; None Of These Solve My Problem.
Now enter all the relative information on the problem. At the bottom of this, you can Add Images.
Under this is Troubleshooting Information. Please press the Share Data button. This will let us look at your system details. No Personal Information Is Collected.
StevenCee what OS are you using?
I have the same problem under Windows 10. Win10 is such a fail of an OS that everything is crappy. This is why I assume that ff being terrible there is reflection of Win10 and not ff 54.
On my main computer with win 7 64, disabling ghostery did the trick and ff has been smooth and responsive ever since.
With win10 everything is terrible, ff included. I just don't have the time to reinstall 7 on that computer so I endure when I have to use it.