topic Re: Firefox Memory Leak in Discussions

Firefox Memory Leak

diligationx12 — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 00:20:25 GMT

I am currently on Firefox 131.0.3 running minimal extensions and I am still having this memory hogging issue. It's just Firefox it seems as well, but the way it handles computer memory is atrocious. It used to be Chrome that would hog resources, so people moved away from it, but since then, it's become way better. Even when my tabs are in standby mode, the issue persists. 44GB of memory taken?! Are you serious?! It has to be a memory leak issue, because I couldn't launch an another application without first closing Firefox, because my computer reported that I was low on memory. It has to be a memory leak problem, because there's no way that 15 discarded tabs needs 44GB of memory. The firefox representative who told me that it wasn't actually using that memory and my computer was incorrectly reading mem usage was wrong.

Please fix the memory leak problem.

Re: Firefox Memory Leak

HywelHarris — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 15:37:41 GMT

Same here. I wish I knew how to log a formal bug, this is terminal for me, I can't live with this nonsense.

Re: Firefox Memory Leak

HywelHarris — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 15:53:59 GMT

This is the state after restarting FF with exactly the same tabs open.

Re: Firefox Memory Leak

Jon — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 16:12:41 GMT

Sorry to hear about this issue. Please report this bug to our bugzilla site - per the that is the proper channel for reporting and tracking bugs. Hope this helps!

Re: Firefox Memory Leak

HywelHarris — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 10:45:32 GMT

Done.

Re: Firefox Memory Leak

Linternet — Sun, 09 Feb 2025 14:16:37 GMT

I would like to emphasize the existential importance of this problem. If you search the web, you will find it has been happening for many years. FF will not maintain a user base with this performance problem.

I have been using FF since it came out, very loyal. But I cannot continue to terminate and restart the browser every couple of days. Yes, I have a lot of windows and tabs, across three Windows virtual desktops. Perhaps 10 Windows, and 40 tabs. This should be supportable in 2025 by a modern browser on a computer with 16 GB RAM. But every few days, my computer slows to a crawl, I check my Task Manager, and find I am at 98% or 99% RAM usage, due to FF.

If I were a FF dev, and wanted this browser to keep market share, I would stop *all* work on *all* other features, and solve this problem first as a matter of survival priority.

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Edit: I just searched BugZilla for "memory leak". Many dozens of open bugs, many going back years. Isn't this a little shocking?

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=memory%20leak

How much more drop in market share is needed to get this addressed?

Re: Firefox Memory Leak

HywelHarris — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 10:26:32 GMT

Have you tried disabling all add-ons then re-enalbing them one by one. My problem was caused by an add blocker. I logged a bug and got the help from devs to diagnose. I was able to turn the adblocker back on and it now no longer causes the issue. FF sits at 6.5Gb with 34 tabs open, and been running for at least a week.

Re: Firefox Memory Leak

firedogtrash — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 20:00:49 GMT

2 years later:

Yes please fix the memory leak

firefox open on dual monitor and switching windows user = 100% crashes every time within 10mins

its really simple to make it crash, is there any motivation to fix it tho?

Re: Firefox Memory Leak

omnipitous — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 18:37:20 GMT

Firefox's memory issues have been reported in Bugzilla for ages. The problem continues to get worse, ergo discussions over here trying to get *any* attention from the dev community. I have reduced my FF usage to the bare minimum these days.. Zero add-ons. No more than 10-15 tabs open ever. Firefox is currently using 2x the ram of my Chrome instance which has nearly 400 active tabs. WTF Is FF doing that is so wasteful??