topic Re: FireFox tabs behaviour after restarting in Discussions

FireFox tabs behaviour after restarting

FYazdani — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 03:55:22 GMT

In the past few days, upon restarting FireFox all tabs in all restored windows start to load. This is very annoying and takes up a lot of memory and time.

Re: FireFox tabs behaviour after restarting

jscher2000 — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 16:52:18 GMT

Could you check these settings:

(A) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

More info on about:config: Configuration Editor for Firefox. Please keep in mind that changes made through this back door aren't fully supported and aren't guaranteed to continue working in the future.

(B) In the search box in the page, type or paste on_demand and pause while the list is filtered

Firefox should show two preferences that match this filter.

(C) If browser.sessionstore.restore_on_demand is bolded and has a value of false, double-click it or click the Toggle button to restore the default value of true -- only the active tab will be restored in each window rather than every tab

You don't need to change the preference for pinned tabs unless you use a lot of pinned tabs.

Does that work on your Firefox?

Re: FireFox tabs behaviour after restarting

janguv — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 20:38:40 GMT

I am having the exact same problem as OP. I tried the about:config setting, but it was already set to true. Any other ideas? Could it be an add-on clash of some sort? It's basically unusable. I can only get Firefox to work if I quickly launch a private window and close the open window with all the tabs in it.

Edit: I was able to check for two recent add-on updates, and I disabled them both. They were: Consent-o-matic and Bitwarden. After disabling both, Firefox started normally. Great news. I haven't whittled it down further, but it stands to reason it's one of them. So, to OP and any others experiencing this problem, I recommend doing the following:

Open a private window as soon as you launch Firefox, and close the main window (so you have resources to work)
Go to your Manage Extensions page, click to settings cog, view recent updates.
Disable the add-ons recently updated.
Re-open closed window, the one with all your tabs (make sure you have the relevant setting on not to lose all your tabs in the first place...)

Hope this helps!

Re: FireFox tabs behaviour after restarting

FYazdani — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 05:14:20 GMT

Thank you for your response.
The said value was already set to "true".
There are no recently updated extensions to account for the behaviour.

Re: FireFox tabs behaviour after restarting

jscher2000 — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 17:53:48 GMT

I can't explain it. You just use the built-in session restore feature, not a session management add-on?

Re: FireFox tabs behaviour after restarting

firefox_chuck — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 15:11:13 GMT

I found the extension that was causing this for me: NordVPN - a VPN proxy extension for Firefox.

I disabled this, reopened Firefox, and it was back to normal. But once I re-enabled the extension, all the other tabs started refreshing immediately.

I'll contact them and let's see how responsive they are.

Re: FireFox tabs behaviour after restarting

Tituss — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 16:22:23 GMT

You nailed it! I also contacted Nord regarding the plugin issue. For me, it started with FF update

125.0.1 Firefox Release - April 16, 2024

Re: FireFox tabs behaviour after restarting

firefox_chuck — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 13:32:22 GMT

I got a response from NordVPN: uninstall the add-on; add it back to FFX from the add-on store, restart FFX. Seems to be working so far.

Re: FireFox tabs behaviour after restarting

Chef_XD — Tue, 04 Jun 2024 16:09:51 GMT

Hello everyone,
I encountered a different behavior or rather a problem recently and I try explain.
Normally I always have x amount of tabs open in my firefox and when I close the browser and restart it they will be loaded again. So I never close these tabs completely.

Recently I had it two times that Firefox was booting up with all tabs closed and just homescreen was loaded and I had to restore my last session. Glad there´s recover function and I always use syncing too.
This can be fatal an I hope this will be fixed cuz I want these tabs to be open and won´t loose my whole session or the open tabs on accident.

Re: FireFox tabs behaviour after restarting

pablo_pueblo — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 11:31:34 GMT

I've had the same problem as OP and it has been VERY annoying.

Can you tell me more about the NordVPN add-on, where is it, how do i uninstall it, why is it there at all and is it at all necessary ?

Many thanks for your help.

Re: FireFox tabs behaviour after restarting

jscher2000 — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 23:53:38 GMT

@pablo_pueblo wrote:
I've had the same problem as OP and it has been VERY annoying.
Can you tell me more about the NordVPN add-on, where is it, how do i uninstall it, why is it there at all and is it at all necessary ?

NordVPN is a paid product, so if it doesn't sound familiar, there's probably a different extension causing the problem. You can review your installed extensions on the Add-ons page. Either:

Click the puzzle piece button on the toolbar > Manage Extensions
Click the main menu button > Add-ons and Themes > Extensions
Ctrl+Shift+A (on Mac, Command+Shift+A) > Extensions

Re: FireFox tabs behaviour after restarting

pablo_pueblo — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 09:07:28 GMT

Many thanks jscher - I will follow that up.

Re: FireFox tabs behaviour after restarting

bengtang — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 03:12:51 GMT

Thanks that worked for my case too. So now I use nordvpn as an OS app and not in the browser extension.