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meulmch
Strollin' around
Status: New idea

Summary:
Introduce a "Maximum Stability for Older Hardware" preset or toggle in the settings menu to automatically optimize performance flags for computers with limited resources (e.g., 8GB RAM, older 4-core CPUs).

Description:
Currently, Firefox defaults to maximizing performance to compete in benchmarks. However, on older hardware, this often leads to sudden crashes due to memory saturation and high process counts—especially with many open tabs.

Manually tweaking these settings via about:config is too complicated for average users. It would be highly beneficial to have a single, non-default checkbox or dropdown menu that applies a stable profile for older machines.

Proposed Changes / Tweaks to Automate:
• Disable Hardware Acceleration: Uncheck "Use recommended performance settings" and "Use hardware acceleration when available".
• Process Limit: Scale down the maximum content process limit (e.g., from default 8 down to 4, matching the physical CPU cores).
• Tab Unloading / Memory Buffers: Adjust memory management configurations to trigger aggressive tab-unloading sooner, preventing out-of-memory crashes before they happen.

Why this matters:
Firefox is famously praised for being a great browser for older systems and Linux distributions. Providing a built-in "Stability over Performance" profile would keep older machines running smoothly without forcing users to dig into advanced configuration editors.

1 Comment
Status changed to: New idea
Jon
Community Manager
Community Manager

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