Firefox has become slow and unresponsive when opening multiple tabs after the latest update.
Hi,
I’ve recently noticed that after a Firefox update, the browser has become very slow and unresponsive whenever I open multiple tabs, around 5–10. Before this update, I could open many tabs without any noticeable lag.
Now, new tabs take a long time to load, scrolling within open tabs feels choppy, and sometimes Firefox freezes for a few seconds before responding again.
I’ve already tried restarting Firefox, disabling extensions one by one, and clearing the cache, but none of these steps have improved the performance. I’m using Windows 10 and the latest version of Firefox.
Could anyone suggest what settings or troubleshooting steps I can try to fix this slowdown?
All Replies (3)
Since basic troubleshooting like restarting, clearing cache, and disabling extensions hasn’t helped, I’m wondering if this could be related to hardware acceleration, content process limits, or a corrupted profile after the recent Mozilla Firefox update on Windows 10. The lag and freezing with just 5–10 tabs open is noticeably different from the smooth performance I had before.
I regularly work with multiple tabs while managing smokeycloudz.com, so this change has significantly disrupted my workflow. Any advanced suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
I have a similar problem, since an update maybe a month or two ago, and I'm on a Mac (M3 MacBook Pro running the latest version of MacOS 15 Sequoia (15.7.5). I was previously able to have dozens of tabs open across multiple windows with no problem. Now 3 open windows running a total of 5 tabs is enough to get the spinning beach ball repeatedly when I switch to Firefox, switch windows, copy the URL bar, etc.
Clearing browser cache, restarting Firefox, rebooting my Mac, and Firefox updates since then have not fixed the problem.
Problems are worst if one or especially multiple tabs play video or audio -- e.g. multiple YouTube video pages open on tabs (even if none of these tabs are active or foremost on a window) and/or Pandora music player, If Pandora is playing while I work in Finder or another app, then I switch to Firefox, the Pandora page has not kept itself updated, and clicking it to update the content triggers the spinning beach ball, as does ⌘-N to open a new window. If Pandora is closed but I have more than 2–4 YouTube tabs open (even if no video is playing and none of the tabs is in the foreground in its window), I also get spinning beach ball.
All of this makes me suspect there might be a problem with how a recent Firefox update handles its media players, so something is now active in the background of EVERY tab that wasn't active before.
I am experiencing similar problem & have opened MULTIPLE Bug reports since Firefox (component) has forcibly upgraded me from Version ~ 132 to currently 152,0,x
Running similarly Windows 10 Pro on a laptop Lenovo T490 :
- 250GB SSD & 16GB Ram. Currently 5GB Free (approaching full) - possibly a contributing factor
- Extensions: Clippings / Simple Tab Groups / Multiple Container Tabs // which are ALSO experiencing problems, INCLUDING DATA LOSS.
- I used to be able to run w/ over 200 Windows open in various tabs (managed w/ STG extension) . Now cannot get past ~20 w/o Tabs crashing & having to be recovered.
Suspect:
- Corrupted Profile - I have never used profiles before experiencing these issues, Only recently have I used as a sandbox. I suspect issues 'may' be profile related (?).
- VPN - I suspect that the VPN component (which I have yet to use) may also be 'using' up (virtual) storage. I think this should have been added as an extension vs a built-in feature.
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