Energy - a battery saving version

[BThomi]

Although I prefer to use the firefox browser, unfortunately it drains the battery on my laptop. A battery saving version would be nice in the future.

[bemymonkey]

Anything that goes towards power reduction will be helpful - that includes notifying the user of background (and possibly even foreground) tabs that consume a lot of power (or CPU cycles) when on battery power. Automagically hibernating background tabs (maybe with a whitelist for tabs you expect notifications from) would also be an excellent start. Rounding this out with a way to throttle foreground tabs' timers etc. and disable animations until they're clicked on while on battery would pretty much complete my entire wish list...

[Krazy]

Very nice suggestion 😉

It could be added as a battery saving feature that extends battery life by between 20~25% without sacrificing performance. When browsing on a laptop without being able to connect it to power, it is a great advantage to be able to save battery, especially when you need the device for work and study.

[jfopps]

I agree with most here. I think a lite version of Firefox or some sort of mode toggle to be a bit more power efficient would be a great addition for us laptop users.

[jvikramsrd]

battery saver for windows and linux

make a battery saver and memory saver feature for firefox to make it further efficient and to recommend to other people with laptops because it battery life is very much important to all laptop users who use their laptops unplugged

[Jon]

Thanks for submitting an idea to the Mozilla Connect community! Your idea is now open to votes (aka kudos) and comments.

[Jon]

(Note: similar ideas have been merged into this thread)

[ostoh]

I switch browsers when I need to save on power. So having this feature natively on the browser would improve this experience.

[Polaroid]

Has anything changed since 2023 ? Battery life seems indeed very important for browser nowadays.

Firefox especially will have a good strategy to focus on this with a well written option. Power saving seems indeed a really good idea.

[sbritorodr]

Asking some friends of mine about why they don't use Firefox and that's because other browsers has resources cap options that could limit memory and cpu usage. Firefox could add this and then simply enable a preconfigured option for battery safe mode.

This should be the key part for being in scene with other browsers. Having this + MV2 support will be overkill for the competece

[Flo]

Hello.

In most cases, when a Firefox instance uses too much resources, the culprit turn out to be one tab (or a few tabs). Firefox contains a built-in tool to see how much CPU and memory is used by each process, and which tabs are loaded in each of these processes. From the menubar: Tools -> Browser Tools -> Task Manager. Or you can also type about:processes in the address bar.

Here's a link to a presentation I gave at FOSDEM explaining the work that is happening to understand how Firefox uses power, and reduce its power use.

[artem]

I did some testing myself, having the same workflow in Firefox and Chrome on my laptop. The difference of battery consumption was: Firefox - 24%/h; Chrome 14%/h. Hardware acceleration, background update setting and the extensions are the same. I did this test when I was clearly noticed that my battery drained faster for some reason. I also checked the battery state and it was not changed.

Obviously, Chromium-based browsers are more energy efficient, but I believe it's possible to improve the Firefox power consumption as well.

[hi0parag]

@Jon 

I'm a big supporter of Firefox and its open-source approach, but unfortunately, high battery drain and increased fan noise prevent me from using it as my primary browser.

In the past three years, competitors like Chrome and Edge have implemented features like sleeping tabs, memory throttling, and energy-saving modes. While I appreciate Firefox's focus on open-source development, prioritizing environmental factors like energy efficiency would make it a more attractive option for users like myself.

[Polaroid]

I have been using the "tab discard" extension. It seems to work well, tab after some time are "sleeping".
This means that almost a complete reload is needed to open them, however at least I can keep them and not have to delete them.
The way it is handle seems to be smart (according to me), I don't see notable difference in battery as I did before.

The solution here might just be to turn our selves to good extensions that can get the job done because Firefox allow good track of performance use of tabs.

[Ford_Prefect]

A special/forked version of Firefox is IMHO not desirable as it would result in a fragmentation of code and therefore also development resources.

Optimization of code, patterns and setting options on the other hand would be great.

[Francesco1]

Any news for 2025? It's November 2024 and still nothing about possible energy savings. Today I did a test on my early 2015 macbook pro, chrome vs firefox. Same (or similar) settings with only one extension, namely UblockOrigin. On chrome i activated all power saving and tab suspend options. I did internet browsing on various sites, mail, youtube videos and netflix, after half an hour the result: chrome uses a little less than half, HALF the energy firefox uses to do the same same things. Properly done energy saving options are needed for firefox, or quite simply, make this browser LIGHTER.

My macbook consumes its entire new battery in less than 3 hours with only firefox open.