Resource Monitor Feedback & Discussion

[tthorne]

We're Building Something New – We'd Like Your Input

Hey everyone,

I'm Tyler, PM for Firefox Performance. Lately, resource usage (CPU & RAM) and better tab management have become some of the most prominent topics in this community; to help address these, we're building an interface that gives you more transparency and control over resource usage, especially as dozens (or even hundreds 😉) of tabs accumulate.

We'd like your input while it's still taking shape.

What We're Building (as seen on the Firefox Public Roadmap)

Resource Monitor: a sidebar panel that shows RAM and CPU usage per tab, grouped by site, sorted automatically by cost to your device. From there, you can unload or close a tab (or group of tabs) to reclaim resources.

🔍‌Check out the screenshot below to see what we have so far.

The goal of Resource Monitor is to empower you to take decisive action without needing to break your browsing flow. This is what differentiates RM from about:processes today: sidebar persistence, tab-level focus, in-line & bulk action buttons. We have several exciting ideas in the pipeline for V2+, but this is the heart of Resource Monitor: lightweight transparency and actionability.

What We Want to Know

We're still in development, which means this is the right moment for your input to actually influence the shape of this shiny new thing we're crafting.

Our prepared questions:

1. When the browser starts dragging: what do you actually want to know first? Which tab is the problem, which site, or just a general "how can I un-slow this thing" recommendation? Something else?
2. Unload vs. close: which matters more to you in the moment? Unloading saves resources while keeping the tab; close is more permanent, but makes the tab list leaner. Curious which flow people prefer.
3. How frequently would you use a tool like this? e.g. one or more times/session, only when something starts to feel off, etc.

Anything else:

Feel free to share any other thoughts or feedback. I'll be watching this thread in the coming weeks. Closely 👀.

Lastly, I'll update this thread as Resource Monitor progresses and lands in Nightly. Thanks for weighing in – our community is a big part of what keeps us moving in the right direction.

Stay cool out there,
-Tyler

P.S. I'll be at this week's community call. Stop by if you want to hear more on this. Monthly Community Call - July 29, 2026 at 5PM UTC 

[Kvin]

Hi, it's great that you're developing a tool like this.

I have a few questions

I'd really like to see a full-featured sleep function for tabs in Firefox, so that I can choose how long it takes for tabs to automatically go to sleep, an option to automatically unload tabs based on memory usage, so that the tab previews show how many MB of memory have been saved—just like in Chromium-based browsers—and options to automatically keep pinned tabs, tabs playing audio, and so on from being unloaded.
It would be great if such a fully functional sleep feature were implemented 🙏

In the mobile version of Firefox, I really want tabs not to be automatically unloaded when the browser is minimized—this is very important 🙏 I can’t use the mobile version of the browser because of this(

Thank you very much!

[tthorne]

Thank you for this. You hit on a couple of helpful themes here.

Desktop: yes. Auto-unload with real controls (how long before a tab sleeps, exemptions for pinned tabs and anything playing audio) is exactly the direction we're headed for what comes after this first version of Resource Monitor. And the memory-saved number in the tab preview is a nice touch – makes the action taken feel more transparent, less magical.

Android: hearing you that aggressive tab unloading is a real blocker to using our app, not just an annoyance. The Android team is actively working on how tabs get killed and reloaded. I don't want to overclaim the timeline or solutions there, but the work is in progress, and getting mobile backgrounding right matters to me personally, as an occasionally perturbed Android user myself.

[kelimuttu]

You may want to vote on the following idea -> https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/putting-a-single-tab-into-sleep-mode-manually-to-save-cpu-amp/i...

[Mkn]

Hi, that's interesting, i think this will be a handy tool...

Will the icon for this tool also be visible on the toolbar, next to the Firefox buttons and the extension buttons?
For example, if I don’t use the sidebar and don’t want to, will I be able to access this tool from the button next to the extensions on the toolbar, so I don’t have to open the sidebar just for this tool?

Will this tool and the tab sleep feature also be implemented in the mobile version of Firefox?

Will this tool or any other new feature include a resource limiter, like in Opera GX or Edge?

I’d like to see a tab archiving feature for the desktop version, you already have this feature in the mobile version, so can you port it to the desktop version? The idea behind this feature is that if you haven’t visited or used certain tabs for a long time, they’ll be automatically closed after a week or a month and moved to the archive of inactive tabs.

But I’d really like to see Firefox itself optimized so that it loads pages quickly and uses fewer resources, because unfortunately it lags behind Сhromium-based browsers(

Thank you!

[tthorne]

Thank you for both the high level and targeted points here. I’ll try to hit them each individually.

1. Sidebar-only access: totally fair. Flagged this as a discoverability and adoption barrier.
2. Resource limiter: absolutely. I see preemptive control as a core part of what comes next, not a nice-to-have.
3. Tab archiving: interesting callout. If I’m understanding you correctly, something like this could nest into the resource limits framework, where you'd set some parameters on time, not just an overall numerical limit. Open question on what the actual mechanism looks like.
4. Mobile port and tab sleeping: an Android implementation of Resource Monitor is on my longer-range roadmap. That’s all I can say for now.
5. Firefox lagging behind Chromium: heard. And, transparently, I agree there’s work to be done. Doing that work right is what grounds my optimism with urgency. It also, every now and then, keeps me up at night.

[zb226]

Hi,

that looks like a nice feature!

1. When the browser starts dragging: what do you actually want to know first? Which tab is the problem, which site, or just a general "how can I un-slow this thing" recommendation? Something else?

Which tabs (and in consequence which sites) are hogging resources is the valuable information. Users can then just close offending tabs (and maybe avoid the offending sites).

2. Unload vs. close: which matters more to you in the moment? Unloading saves resources while keeping the tab; close is more permanent, but makes the tab list leaner. Curious which flow people prefer.

Tab hoarders don't like closing tabs 😉 so unload would be preferred.

3. How frequently would you use a tool like this? e.g. one or more times/session, only when something starts to feel off, etc.

When I notice Firefox using obscene amounts of RAM. However, seeing that this kinda resembles the vertical taskbar... I could also see myself using this most of the time 😉

[tthorne]

Right on. Thanks for the itemized input. Your note on this resembling vertical tabs resonates. Internal discussions on this are ongoing, and lively.

“Tab hoarders don’t like closing tabs”. Well said – I walked right into that one.

[ffffff]

That's gorgeous. Interesting to group it by website, and very handy to be able to select resource-hogging tabs and unload them all at once.

1. When the browser starts dragging: what do you actually want to know first? Which tab is the problem, which site, or just a general "how can I un-slow this thing" recommendation? Something else?

As a filthy tab hoarder, I want to know "how can I un-slow this thing" so that I can continue to act like 500 tabs aren't the root cause. I'm aware that's a fantasy, but it's like storage: you only care about it when it's lacking and only for so long as it takes to get back to what you were doing before.

2. Unload vs. close: which matters more to you in the moment? Unloading saves resources while keeping the tab; close is more permanent, but makes the tab list leaner. Curious which flow people prefer.

Closing tabs is usually a no-no because that goes outside the scope of resource management and into the realm of questions such as "will I actually cook this recipe before the end of the year," for which I feel a different kind of tooling is required.

3. How frequently would you use a tool like this? e.g. one or more times/session, only when something starts to feel off, etc.

I'd probably start using Resource Monitor when web navigation gets sluggish, though knowing me I'd likely end up opening it obsessively like social media to check for cute kitty videos stray tabs to kill. The easier it is to open it, dump a few tabs and close, the better. Be neat if it was possible with keyboard only (e.g. arrow up/down, space to select, delete to... oh bummer, that's ambiguous).

Speaking of things that are out of scope, a while back a bunch of friends switched to OperaGX for its so-called RAM limiter. How well it works, I've no idea... but the idea alone got a bunch of them to voluntarily change browsers, which I thought was impossible at the time. Maybe something worth exploring later? Just a thought, look up GX Control if that sounds interesting. P.S. I see that it was already mentioned by others, great stuff.

[tthorne]

Couldn’t help but smile at the first line. Thank you for this.

Your framing on why tab closes shouldn't be the primary action here is well stated, and it aligns with where we've been leaning from a design standpoint.

Agreed on keyboard navigation. It’s a nuanced but meaningful gap, and I’ve noted it as a friction point for everyday use.

Heard on the “how can I un-slow this” recommendation. I can understand why a case with hundreds of tabs warrants a “cleanup” style option. Just needs the right calibration. 

We must strike the balance between ease of use, and honoring the sanctity of cute kitty videos.

[KERR]

I've been waiting for a long time for this!

• When the browser starts dragging: what do you actually want to know first? 
  Which tab or extension (or even script) is causing the most trouble. Windows task manager has a heatmap which is great for this. Edge/Chrome also show the network usage of each tab, which is awesome
• Unload vs. close
  Unload!! Close should be an absolute last resort. How about a message "Firefox has detected tab X is misbehaving so it has unloaded it to save resources"
• How frequently would you use a tool like this? 
  Only when I notice the laptop heating up or things feel sluggish. It might also help to prioritise which of my tabs I should get around to closing! Same with extensions, it would be nice to see which ones are the heaviest on CPU/RAM.

[tthorne]

Succinctly put – thank you. There are some really strong ideas in here. I’ll go number by number.

1. Hadn’t yet considered the heat mapping angle. Its visual language is excellent for a quick overview, particularly in more dense use cases (many tabs, many irons in the fire). Noted, both in terms of the literal approach of task manager, and in the underlying principles of its design. Networking is… on our short list. That’s all I’ll say for now.
2. For sure. As we look to setting and imposing limits in the next iteration, this kind of message is exactly what we’re looking for.
3. Extensibility is critical to Firefox, so expanding the scope to include extensions feels uniquely authentic. Fair callout. about:processes keeps an eye on top level “extensions” usage, but I can easily see why a more granular view would be immediately insightful, as a heavy extension user myself.

[denyshon]

Hi! Love to see this coming, though it seems to be more of a UI enhancement for an existing feature(s).

I'd really appreciate any kind of automatic action that Firefox would take to manage memory usage, such as auto-unloading tabs that use the most resources.

Currently, we have a feature that is supposed to unload tabs automatically under memory pressure, but unfortunately, it never triggers. And when Firefox starts freezing, there's little a user can do manually via the UI. Maybe we could change the activation mechanism of this (already existing) feature to make it really work?

[tthorne]

Hey @denyshon – thank you for the input on these.

To confirm, automatic tab unload with direct controls is exactly where we’re heading next with Resource Monitor.

That said, you bring up a good point that I want to keep separate: we have an existing unload mechanism that doesn’t trigger as expected. I see a related experiment was run on this back in 2022 that made it past initial testing, but it's clearly not active today. Digging in with our engineers to understand what happened.

Thanks again for flagging this. Even as we land the next phase of Resource Monitor, you shouldn’t have to go to a specific panel to get healthy unload behavior.

[okay_okay]

Now this is a feature I'm really excited to see you developing. I will use this. This has been mentioned here but I'll add that it would be nice to add an option to automatically unload tabs. 

[tthorne]

Very happy to hear this.

And thanks for backing the auto-unload function. It’s come up frequently in this thread, but that repetition is invaluable signal as I plan the next iteration.