Sporadic toolbar freezing when using Firefox
Hello everyone, since a few months ago (I think it started happening on June) I am having this problem where the bookmark bar, the tabs, the search bar, well actually eve… (read more)
Hello everyone, since a few months ago (I think it started happening on June) I am having this problem where the bookmark bar, the tabs, the search bar, well actually everything in the header of the Firefox window will suddenly freeze and become almost unresponsive, and I say almost since I can still interact with the content, it will just not update visually when I do so. For example, if that glitch occurs, whenever I close a tab the other tabs won't cling onto one another like they should usually do, there's a wide space from the tab I closed that never gets filled. Additionally, right clicking stops functioning completely when Firefox is in this state. This strange glitch was only encountered recently, been using Firefox for almost a decade now and I have never seen this before.
The first time it occured was admittedly my fault and I thought it would only happen that day. I had over-stressed the browser by downloading an enormous amount of data at once, or more so I was about to. I have an extension called DownThemAll, and I like to download a ton of images off the internet, so as I was using DownThemAll that way, the browser started to slow down, then I interacted with something else on the browser and this is when this occured to me for the first time.
However, although I did not repeat the same mistake twice, this issue happened to me a total of 8 times.
The second time, I was on a private browsing window (Which had all the extensions disabled, except for uBlock origin, uBO-Scope, Decentraleyes, Emoji cheatsheet, Newsguard and an extension called Ecosia that acts as a button to get onto the main page of a search engine), and all I did for it to occur again was to check the download page as I was downloading a file from Mediafire. The third time, the same thing occured on a private window after I downloaded something from another website (Can't remember which one). The fourth time, it was caused because I opened a webpage on a private new tab (Can't remember which site). The fifth time, I added a page into my bookmarks by using the star icon. The sixth time occured by clicking on the search bar on my browser. The seventh time, it occured again by accessing a website on a private window, it was a neocity website called "loveweb" that was made by an animator on YouTube called Shadok. The eighth and final time it happened was yesterday and it wasn't on a private window this time, it was on my normal Firefox window, it happened because I wanted to check the history of all the pages I've viewed.
6 times out of 8, the problem happens although I'm on a private tab and the "patient zero" DownThemAll is disabled, and I had all the other extensions installed prior to the issue happening, so that cannot be them that cause the issue in the first place. Additionally, I have a few more extension on my "public" Firefox (Facebook container, OceanHero search, Simple Mass downloader (As temporary replacement), etc), but they couldn't possibly be the culprits as they are also disabled on the private window, and most of them have been installed a long time ago. I theorize that one of two things might be the cause of my problem.
- DownThemAll broke something in my browser the day I had used it improperly since the issue only started happening after that fateful day.
- Firefox updated and that broke something in the browser, so now I have this issue.
Note that uninstalling DownThemAll didn't fix the problem, which was obtuse on my part as the problem occurs even when it is disabled, so I reinstalled it.
Also note that the glitch is so sporadic and, should I say, rare that I cannot reliably troubleshoot it to fix the problem myself. If I could I would disable each extension one by one, alter the about:config options and modify my settings on the settings menu to see what could potentially cause the problem.