Firefox should suspend tabs to better performance

[EduardoBernal]

Firefox isn't with useful tool, which is tabs suspender, it saves of much hardware consume and doesn't allow your PC stay slowness and/or your own internet, because tabs can consume internet and recourses in background without you use it, so that's important and should be in all popular browsers including Firefox. I recommend they base on auto tab discard and possibly performance tool (by Microsoft Edge), because auto tab discard extension is really complete and very useful, mainly it saves where you stop on certain time video and performance tool saves much your recourses on your computer and is very efficient:

[codes09]

@ssssaaaaaaa I completely agree. The UX sucks for many people. Although it would be nice if Frontend devs became more mindful of the impact of JS frameworks and how they use them. And what impact this has in real use.

Also the oodles of scripts people add that poll and run background processes in the browser. Here's looking at you Google Analytics & Facebook.

Just because 1 site does not saturate the machine does not mean when several tabs are used together that most machines cope well.

In the last 20 odd years moving from static (early web days) to reactive sites means I need 6-10GB or Ram to run a browser v.s. 500mb-1Gb to run the entire machine with Ram to spare. Back then I could surf the web 100 tabs wide on 1Gb of Ram. What a contrast.

The conveniences we've added in software on many levels is having a huge knock on effect on how much Ram we need.  Thankfully Ram is getting cheaper but it's fairly hard even now for the average person to have more than 16Gb of Ram on Laptops. So power users are out of luck unless they buy the most expensive lines. And that counts even for Apple who seem to starve their line-up by touting 16Gb is enough for anyone. 

Starting to sound familiar like earlier in the DOS days when it was said that 2mb of Ram would be more than anyone would need in their lifetime. They had not considered OS and Software bloat yet.

[mirrorsreveal]

This will help for operational efficiency, my primary system is a laptop and I'm a power user, I was performing at 81% Ram yesterday and some sleep modes would assist on load performance.

[Qeeet]

Please, make it in a way that by default it freezes all background tabs (in a way Edge does), but with ability to disable this feature on particular tabs, for example right clicking on a tab -> Do not freeze the tab (in context menu)

[GPMike]

Dude, this is why gecko based browsers aren't my favorite anymore. It should be an option, not enbedded in the code or at least be able to toggle it in about:config. I DO NOT LIKE a browser that reloads tabs--that wastes data and it is very frustrating when you are watching a youtube video and part way through it I get a call and when I go back to it, it reloads.

Android 11 and up has taken this route, but can be stopped in developer options, but the browser still does it sometimes. Iceraven has a toggle for that, but it doesn't work. I hate this feature, but cromite(a chromium based browser) doesn't do that. It doesn't even flash my tabs when I go back to them--they are right there for me solid as a rock. I'm not a fellow that has a bunch of tabs open anyways. Most of the time maybe five to seven.

[brixter]

Please add an option "Suspend all other tabs". By suspend, I mean either:

1. Stop everything in those pages. Stop downloading the page, stop videos or streaming cams, stop scripts. Just keep the state of the page as is.

2. Or, unload the page. Reset the page to a blank page and just keep the URL in the address. The user can just reload the page when he wants to.

I keep a lot of tabs open and Firefox slows to a crawl trying to keep every page active. I wish that Firefox just focuses on the current page.

[moz_samri]

I remember, more than a year ago, that FF was to have some type of tabs idle capability.

Today I had 2 Private windows, each w multiple tabs, and 2 non-private windows open.
The memory consumption was > 20 FF* images (win10),  and the comsumption on a 8GB ram sys was about 5GB !    Although I have newer systems, this one is used for low power and portability.

Many other people, especially mobile workers,  especially need to have lower power drain, yet ratain open tabs.  In my case I have multiple consurrent projects, that require a lot of research.

The idea of  suspending tabs (which would still take up ram, is OK), but the suggestion of temp saving them, as some-named-entity, for user, would be extremely useful and energy consumption awareness.

I also use many Bookmarks, and the ability to PUSH most of them, under the TopLevel bmrk's folder identity, would similarly be useful.

In suspending activity, in general, one should also allow the "restore recent tabs" and tabs saved in history, of the main window, would cut down on memory usage...  With today's SSD's the penalty for saving, and restoring a bookmark group, when is is not EXPANDED, would similary speed up and conserve energy...

Any or all those would make FFox more agile, and all would use similar mechanisms wrt storage management "suspend.entityType" class specializations.

[nazz]

Is there any update to this as, the last time we got an update (from Jon the Community manager) was 2 years ago?

[Elle]

I use an extension for this.

[SammyB]

Better memory management -

Firefox is piss poor in releasing its memory, often resulting in multi GB of memory used and FF locking up. Had 2 tabs, Mail (AOL, yes I still use AOL) and Fox News and memory usage reach 8GB.  You should release memory when objects are no longer in view or at least suspend load of data into those objects when not in view. That goes for all open tabs. Close a tab, immediately release all memory used by all objects on that tab.

Respectfully,

Firefox User

[Jon]

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

[yokoff]

Still no updates…

[SaerGardum]

Tab suspension on lose-focus

I have the habit of leaving all tabs open, either because I need to remember my current endeavors (having them serve as a cache to my own memory too), or because of trying to prevent them from reloading, or preserving their status/login, etc, or, even due to pure laziness.

Therefore, there's only one complaint I have about firefox: whenever I watch the memory and cpu usage of many of my otherwise idle tabs, they seem to be both consuming cpu and increasing in size.

So, my wish is that firefox would be able to suspend any operation that these tabs are trying to do in the background, which is clearly for the benefit of every site's vendor and not mine, probably even spying on me. I'd like to see them suspended not to disk, like some existing extensions do, otherwise closing them and keeping as bookmarks would do fine. Just their processes and timers suspended until the get their focus again, if ever.

[Jon]

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

[perladuenas1]

Hi I'm Perla and I'm a product manger on the Performance team. This is actually now a possibility on Nightly. If you download the latest Firefox Nightly and right click on a tab you should be able to see the option to "unload tab." Please try it out and let us know how you like it! 

[Jon]

Hey all,

Good news...

This is being worked on and is currently available to try out in Firefox Nightly - see @perladuenas1's recent comment in the thread to learn more.

Check it out and stay tuned for more updates 🙌