Firefox hogging RAM

September 12, 2005 1:10 AM

Peeking into Activity Monitor in Mac OS 10.3, I am noticing that Firefox is using more than 130 of my 512 megabytes of RAM, along with more than 450 megs of virtual memory. This is with one window open with three tabs (this page, a blog, and GMail). Do I have some setting set incorrectly or is Firefox a shamless RAM hog? Is there another browser that might leave me with more memory for Word, Excel, Entourage, Photoshop, iTunes, etc?
posted by sindark to computers & internet (18 comments total)

Ive noticed that too with the PC version of Firefox
posted by spooksie at 1:37 AM on September 12, 2005

Firefox is a hog. Try Opera. You can even tell it how much memory it's allowed to use, but even if you don't, it sips it very gently in normal use. Actually, Opera is superior in a variety of ways. Take the plunge! :-)
posted by evariste at 1:51 AM on September 12, 2005

I've had bad experiences with Firefox on OS X. It runs perfectly on my Windows machine, but the mac version seems to need some help. I'd recommend either Camino or Opera. Both work well for me.
posted by meta87 at 1:53 AM on September 12, 2005

By way of reference, I currently have about 35 tabs open in Opera, and it's using about 120 mb of RAM. Keep in mind that I use M2, Opera's mail client, for email, so that's included. For you, since you use Entourage, M2 will never be loaded (it only gets loaded if you're actively using it, and it's only a couple hundred kb in the first place).
posted by evariste at 2:11 AM on September 12, 2005

Try this: type about:config into the location bar, press enter, right click any line, choose "new">"integer", paste this into the dialogue that appears:

browser.cache.memory.capacity

click okay, specify 16000 kb in the next dialogue that appears, restart firefox.

This gives FF 16 mb of memory cache. See if it helps.
posted by sic at 2:19 AM on September 12, 2005

Running Firefox 1.0.6 on Tiger (10.4) I see 51 MB real and 350 MB virtual. This is with one window and three tabs (this page, slashdot main page, and my gmail inbox). Also, this is a fresh install of Firefox.

Generally, I don't pay too much attention to an app's memory usage unless the system starts swapping. For software development work, I find OS X runs quite well with 512 MB. In fact, my G5 was delivered with 512 MB and I didn't bother adding more for two years. And I get memory for free.
posted by ryanrs at 3:22 AM on September 12, 2005

Opera's using 86M of physical memory and has a VM size of 143M here in WinXP. I'm running in 1600*1200, and have my tab bar down the left hand side of the display. The tab extender menu is half the height of the entire display, which means I have about 80 tabs open.

You did get a free key while they were giving them away, right?
posted by Freaky at 4:57 AM on September 12, 2005

Try this: type about:config into the location bar, press enter, right click any line, choose "new">"integer"

Um, or you could just use the Options dialog box....:)
posted by cyrusdogstar at 5:23 AM on September 12, 2005

Safari uses about 125mb for me after several days of browsing through hundreds of tabs--it leaks RAM, but it doesn't hemmorhage it the way Firefox can.

You might also want to try one of the G4-specific Firefox builds or, like someone else suggested, the Mac-centric Mozilla project Camino.

You might also want to buy more RAM if your Mac isn't already maxed out--it's dead cheap these days. And check to make sure you've run Software Update so you have the latest upgrades to 10.3; I'm sure at least a FEW memory-leak type bugs must have been fixed along the way.
posted by bcwinters at 6:20 AM on September 12, 2005

sic is right -- a cache capacity has to be set. Apparently it's the flash plug-in that causes the problem. This site suggested the fix a couple of months ago, and it does make a huge difference (it recommends 60k as the cache size, though -- a big higher than what sic mentions).
posted by 5500 at 7:11 AM on September 12, 2005

As others have alluded to, I think Firefox can have some pretty serious memory leakage. Every now and then I will notice that my memory use is suspiciously high, and when I look into it there's Firefox using 350+ MB of my physical memory. This is rare, and restarting Firefox fixes it, but it is something that the developers need to look into. I have always assumed that it was the fault of errant extensions, however, so I'm not sure how much they can actually do about it.
On preview: I guess it's Flash.
posted by Who_Am_I at 7:24 AM on September 12, 2005

I never seem to have a problem with the G4 build of Firefox and I work in that constantly. I seem to have the memory hog problem in Safari all the time though. The connection is that I keep Gmail open all the time in Safari.

I blame Gmail.
posted by authenticgeek at 9:53 AM on September 12, 2005

I would second trying Camino. You don't get the extensions but it is a much simpler application and works great.
posted by pwb503 at 10:03 AM on September 12, 2005

I don't know about the Flash issues, but I've had similar problems on XP. Other than the cache thing, which I've tried with some success, you can also (in Windows anyway) minimize all the browser windows to free a ton of memory. When you bring them back up, they take up a good bit less space than before.

I'm admittedly mostly useless on Mac, so this may not work at all there. But might be worth a shot, and to any XP users out there, it should work.
posted by SuperNova at 11:17 AM on September 12, 2005

Dude, I hate that Firefox is such a hog. It also doesn't like to run at the same time as Safari, iPhoto, or iTunes most of the time. I'm constantly compromising, I have Activity Monitor open all the time, but Safari isn't reliable enough for me to give up Firefox entirely. You know what else I like? Firefox will actually quit without the windows closing, I'll look in Activity Monitir to see what is going on and it will be gone, but not actually closed. Even after crashing it's a hog.

I got Opera on their anniversary, maybe this will be an impetus to start using it.
posted by scazza at 1:41 PM on September 12, 2005

Is there any official acknowledgement from Mozilla corp of this problem?

I experience memory hogging also (up to a minute of hard drive thrashing when switching back to Firefox after 15 minutes in another program) and it is quite frustrating as the only downside to an otherwise brilliant browser...
posted by erebora at 1:56 PM on September 12, 2005

@sic

Thanks. That brings it down to 40 megs of physical memory, with 315 of virtual memory.

I did get a free Opera key during their party, but I find switching hotkey combinations to be a great deal of trouble. I can deploy the Firefox ones now without even thinking. That 'close tab' in Firefox is the same as 'close window' in Opera is killer for me.
posted by sindark at 4:21 PM on September 12, 2005

sindark-you can change all the keyboard shortcuts to be more like Firefox's. Try Hugin & Munin, a custom distribution of Opera.
posted by evariste at 5:01 PM on September 12, 2005