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Firefox using over 500MB memory?? wtf

O

oregon2

macrumors regular
Original poster
I just updated my Unibody 15" MBP (only 2GB RAM) and now firefox is consistently using over 500MB of memory. It really seems to be clogging things up. Anyone else seeing this?

EDIT: Now 640mb. wtf.

EDIT: 830MB when playing youtube. come one.. .
 
It's a feature, not a bug... (Joking. Someone had to say it.)

What extensions are you using, how many tabs do you have open, and how long has Firefox been open without quitting?
 
broken-chaos said:
It's a feature, not a bug... (Joking. Someone had to say it.)

What extensions are you using, how many tabs do you have open, and how long has Firefox been open without quitting?
Click to expand...

Been using it a long time, probably 12 hours including a few sleeps. LOTS of tabs open. Don't wanna bother counting. Not many extensions though.

Sure, I may be using it heavily, but it was never like this before I upgraded (psshhh more like downgraded).

I wanna know though, does this not bother you guys? Do none of you use firefox?

BTW, it is now using over a gigabyte. Straight up ********.
 
FF was actually running slower than Safari for me since Safari Beta 4. Safari had some minor glitches on sites where I would get the beach ball a lot, but since SL upgrade from a fresh wipe, I haven't even bothered with FF anymore.

Safari is ultra fast at rendering and I really LOVE the feature where you type in a couple letters after CMD-L, see the site title in the address bar, and just press ENTER...poof, you're there.

The more I use Safari 4, the more distance away from FF I am comfortable with.

Oh. Using the history tab while in coverflow mode? Un'f'ing real how useful that is. You can instantly scroll and identify a 'click' with ease.
 
stevetim said:
Safari is ultra fast at rendering and I really LOVE the feature where you type in a couple letters after CMD-L, see the site title in the address bar, and just press ENTER...poof, you're there.

.
Click to expand...

can you confirm though - one of the big reasons i don't use safari is
if you type two words in the URL bar, it will pickup the site. For example, my firefox will list every url i've been to (spotlight history) in order of popularity if type mac - (it will show macrumours, apple, 9to5mac, etc)

if i type mac on safari it will list all url's beginning with the word mac.

safari doesn't do 'spotlight' search in the url based on history which is silly since apple owns the whole spotlight methodology.

check my quest for this here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/718131/
 
yeh, FF url bar is far superior. i try safari every few weeks, but it never sticks.

FF normally uses 250-400mbish of ram.. i've never seen it use a gig... wow.
 
musio said:
can you confirm though - one of the big reasons i don't use safari is
if you type two words in the URL bar, it will pickup the site. For example, my firefox will list every url i've been to (spotlight history) in order of popularity if type mac - (it will show macrumours, apple, 9to5mac, etc)

if i type mac on safari it will list all url's beginning with the word mac.

safari doesn't do 'spotlight' search in the url based on history which is silly since apple owns the whole spotlight methodology.

check my quest for this here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/718131/
Click to expand...

when I type mac in the address bar, macrumors is the first thing that comes up for me with all other suggestions such as macworld, mac2sell etc
 
My record is 1.87GB with Safari 4 😎

If you always put it to sleep like I do and don't quit Firefox, it'll use more. I quit my browsers by time to time because they use a lot of memory
 
Willis - i don't think you get it comrade. Try putting in anything but the first letters of a site and it won't come up. Yes it does list sites if you know the beginning letters but if you don't, your stuck.....unless you use firefox as it has history/bookmark spotlight!

I wish safari had this as i would switch. Safari run's a hell of a lot quicker
 
It's not just Snow Leopard's fault, you should be quitting Firefox when RAM usage gets crazily high. Heavy usage with multiple tabs is bound to increase RAM usage, you've got to remeber that Firefox isn't great at flushing RAM as closed tabs and all its history still reside in the memory until you clear the closed tabs list.
 
stevetim said:
Safari is ultra fast at rendering and I really LOVE the feature where you type in a couple letters after CMD-L, see the site title in the address bar, and just press ENTER...poof, you're there.
Click to expand...

Not to bust your bubble..but FF has had that same feature since before safari got it lol
 
daneoni said:
Isn't that still in like Pre-Alpha and hella buggy?
Click to expand...

Its not terrible, but a bit unstable. Chrome on a mac does work pretty good for being pre-alpha.

Firefox has been getting steadily worse since v3.3. I've been getting lots of beachballing, stalls and hicups with both 3.4 and now even worse in 3.5.

Right now I am using Safari and much happier with performance. I just use Xmarks to sync book marks and I can seamlessly use which ever browser.
 
They are memory hogs. If it gets troublesome just close the browser and restart it.

Of course that said, my browser has been open for about a week and it's only hovering around 400MB usage. And that's with 5 windows with about 20 tabs each.
 
I just downloaded the Alpha and its actually pretty decent. Obviously nowhere near prime time but its usable and fast, although facebook crashes it more than other sites for some reason as does trying to edit bookmarks
 

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Hmm... I just tried having 14 tabs open in Firefox (all fully loaded) and the memory usage of Firefox was below that of Safari, which was running 4 tabs.

I've never seen it go above about 300MB, I think.

What really gets me going is the ridiculous Flash Player CPU usage in Snow Leopard.

Screen shot on the left: Firefox memory with 14 tabs
On the right: Safari Flash CPU usage; in the iStat menu the higher part on the left was an HD video (maxing at over 100% CPU on my dual core CPU)
 

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MarcBook said:
Hmm... I just tried having 14 tabs open in Firefox (all fully loaded) and the memory usage of Firefox was below that of Safari, which was running 4 tabs.

I've never seen it go above about 300MB, I think.

What really gets me going is the ridiculous Flash Player CPU usage in Snow Leopard.

Screen shot on the left: Firefox memory with 14 tabs
On the right: Safari Flash CPU usage; in the iStat menu the higher part on the left was an HD video (maxing at over 100% CPU on my dual core CPU)
Click to expand...

so are you comparing 2 browsers while one is streaming HD video, and one isn't?
 
i use FF, safari and Opera... the newest version of Opera (10.0) is amazingly fast and have had no issues like those i see with FF or safari... great browser, been using Opera for a while now... i tend to go back to FF only cause of extra features on my mac like zooming with track pad and using three finger technique to go to top of page and bottom of page quickly... but other than a few minor features, opera in my opinion is a better browser with fewer problems 🙂
 
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