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Firefox unusable, 90% CPU consumption

kioshi

kioshi

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 30, 2010
55
0
Brazil
Anyone having this problem? I haven't been using it much after Safari 5 (just because Firefox takes forever to open compared to Chome and Safari) but I think that since 3.6.4 or 3.6.5 it constantly hogs my system using 80%-90% of my CPU according to Activity Monitor. RAM usage is similar to other browsers.

Yeah I know I have an old Mac (Mini Core Duo 1.66) but right now for example Safari 5 with 5 tabs is using 5% and Chome is at 4.5%.

I know it's not the extensions because I downloaded the 4.0 beta which disabled most of them (just to test it) and the same thing happened.

Btw I'm using 10.6.4

Thanks!
 
I have a macbook pro 13"

Presume my problem is slightly different from yours. I installed latest firefox but it is slowly becoming unusable. First it starts to run slow like hell, then it stops responding to click and later just freezes, it also freezes my doc and top panel so Im having troubles force quitting it.


The main reason I installed it its because SAfari stops loading videos on youtube like half way alway and its annoying as hell.
 
Have you tried creating a new user account to see if the problem is replicated there?
 
Instead of creating a new OS X user profile - try dragging out your Firefox folder from within ~/Application Support/ to the Desktop. Now start Firefox. "~" meaning your home folder.
 
Yeah must be something on my computer, I'll delete Firefox and all the extensions, no biggie since Chrome has been my default browser for a long time.

I didn't try the methods you described but I'm using the same Firefox 3.6.6 (with some extensions, multiple tabs with heavy sites like facebook) on my external HD which has another installation of Mac OS X 10.6 and the CPU consumption is normal.

Thank guys! :)
 
kioshi said:
Yeah must be something on my computer, I'll delete Firefox and all the extensions, no biggie since Chrome has been my default browser for a long time.

I didn't try the methods you described but I'm using the same Firefox 3.6.6 (with some extensions, multiple tabs with heavy sites like facebook) on my external HD which has another installation of Mac OS X 10.6 and the CPU consumption is normal.

Thank guys! :)
Click to expand...

Just move the plist to the Desktop and rerun Firefox.

~/Library/Preferences/org.mozilla.firefox.plist
 
YouTube and Firefox never got along together when I used to use FF. It would idle with similar CPU percentage readings compared to Safari.
 
-aggie- said:
Just move the plist to the Desktop and rerun Firefox.

~/Library/Preferences/org.mozilla.firefox.plist
Click to expand...

Thank you aggie, great solution if I have this problem again. Since my Firefox on my main OS was overcrowded and full of **** I do not use, I just deleted everything and used FEBE to sync the extensions with the Firefox in my 'cleaner' external HD which also has Mac OS X.

But very good to know you can just move the plist file :D
 
I highly recommend FEBE as well. Only caveat is that if you have a profile with a lot of bookmarks and passwords in it, as well as a ton of extensions, it might start getting stuck, and have to be reinstalled.
 
Hmmm I think I found the cause at least here.

The Stylish extension. I used it to install a theme so that my bookmarks toolbar would show favicons next to the names, like Firefox does natively on Windows.

After I restarted, the CPU usage skyrocketed again to 70-90%.

Then I disabled the extension (didn't uninstall, just disabled), restarted Firefox and it's smooth again.

It still uses like 8-20% compared to Chrome's 6%ish (with eight tabs, but each tab in chrome adds less than 0.3% to the usage so it can get as low as 3% with one or two tabs).
 
DoFoT9 said:
^^ ahh crappy extensions then :( glad u got it sorted!

may i ask what extension it was?
Click to expand...

I already answered in my previous post :)

It was Stylish. I had it installed on my original system's Firefox because it allows you to implement favicons next to the bookmarks in the bookmarks bar (Firefox for windows does this natively).

I was using Windows and got used to having the favicons (who knows why the mac version of FF doesn't show them) so I followed the 'tip' here: http://lifehacker.com/394488/add-favicons-to-the-bookmark-toolbar

But Stylish, which was needed for that, slowed my Firefox to a crawl.
 
DoFoT9 said:
^^ OH! sorry about that. completely missed that line :(
Click to expand...

Heh, no prob mate :)

But I'm still mad that Chrome shows my favicons on the bookmarks bar and Firefox does not, while in Windows Firefox does that with no need of extensions :mad:
 
kioshi said:
Heh, no prob mate :)

But I'm still mad that Chrome shows my favicons on the bookmarks bar and Firefox does not, while in Windows Firefox does that with no need of extensions :mad:
Click to expand...

that does suck. would mean you dont need the text in the bar and just use the icon? thats kinda cool! Mac development of FF is a tad behind unfortuntaely :(
 
DoFoT9 said:
that does suck. would mean you dont need the text in the bar and just use the icon? thats kinda cool! Mac development of FF is a tad behind unfortuntaely :(
Click to expand...

No, actually Windows' Firefox does just like Chrome in Mac, the favicon plus the text on the right.

I saw add-ons to get rid of the text so that you could keep only the favicons, didn't interest me because I use multirow boomarks (another FF extension) so that I can have multiple rows in my bookmarks toollbar.

Take a lookie here if you wanna get rid of the text, there are good answers_ http://superuser.com/questions/39014/make-bookmarks-toolbar-in-firefox-only-show-favicon
 
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