Does having inactive tabs, such as news articles with embedded videos playing, consume data?
In my location, my only option for internet access is a mobile hotspot with limited data. Consequently, I am always mindful of my data usage when using my laptop. Despite primarily browsing static pages, email, and other low-data activities, I often find my data usage higher than anticipated. The main culprit comes to mind to be videos embedded in news articles. Sometimes, with multiple tabs open, I switch to an inactive tab only to find a video playing. Although I've configured my Firefox preferences not to autoplay videos, it seems that YouTube videos still override these settings.
So, my question is, when a tab is inactive, does Firefox stop all data transfer for that tab in the background? And if not, what are the solutions to stop any background data other than continually closing all tabs?
Also, any suggestions on this topic are appreciated, especially from and to users who also live in remote areas without fiber, DSL, etc.
Modified by Terra Civis
All Replies (8)
You can search the Add-ons website for a suitable extension.
You can consider uBlock Origin as a replacement for your current Adblocker extension(s) to see if that works better (lower memory footprint, less issues).
You can look at these prefs on the about:config page to see what settings work for you to block autoplay.
- media.autoplay.default = 5 [0:allow;1:blockAudible;5:blockAll]
- media.autoplay.blocking_policy = 2
- media.autoplay.allow-extension-background-pages => false
- media.autoplay.block-event.enabled => true
- media.block-autoplay-until-in-foreground
You can open the about:config page via the address/location bar. You can read the warning and click "Accept the Risk and Continue".
See also:
- /questions/1440276 This is a continue on previous quesiton 1440060 tread, since reply ends with Error
Modified by cor-el
You should now be able to reply again in this thread.
I applied the settings mentioned above to stop the auto plays - but I still need to check if saves my mobile data. Anyway, I distinctly recall setting media.auto-play.default in the past, but surprisingly, it was reset to 0. Do these settings change with updates? Should I periodically check them?
Moreover, since adjusting these settings, Firefox has been freezing up frequently - c attached. It occurred three times within just an hour this morning, particularly when I was reading news from various sources, starting from Google News and moving to different providers, but mostly Yahoo. While browsing, the pointer becomes unresponsive, and clicking on certain actions yields no response. Eventually, the pointer transforms into the spinning rainbow ball, prompting me to force quit Firefox.
Today, I noticed on a Yahoo article that the vertical scrolling action causes the mini player to appear each time you move the vertical scrolling bar. While reproducing it to figure out what is going on, the freeze-up happened again. It seems like the content and the browser are fighting each other in a never-ending loop ending FF using up all resources - see attached.
Anyone experiencing similar issues with these settings or having a fix for this, your input would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
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, you can transfer files from a previously used profile to the new profile, but be careful not to copy corrupted files to avoid carrying over problems.