Firefox using so much memory that my entire screen goes black and I have to hard-reset my computer
Hi, The versions of Firefox since Feb 2026 have been extremely memory hungry on Windows 10, even though I have the option to restore tabs on demand set to TRUE in the config.
The memory hungriness has got so bad now that even on my 16GB machine, about once a week I find that my computer has suddenly run out of memory without warning and my entire screen goes black (not just within the Firefox window, the entire screen). When the computer gets into that state I am unable to use Ctrl+Alt+Del to get back to Task Manager, and the only way out is to hard-reset my computer.
This means that whenever I want to do anything else remotely memory hungry, such as running my research code, or a game, or a Zoom meeting, I have to kill Firefox first. But I sometimes even end up with black screen when trying to use Word or Excel alongside Firefox.
Essentially, Firefox is becoming unusable on my desktop, and its bookmark feature is borderline unusable on mobile now since the update a month ago made it impossible to change which folder I save my new mobile bookmarks in.
So if I have two more black screen clashes I think I will give up using Firefox entirely after being loyal to it for about 15 years. This is extremely disappointing.
Louise