2

I am using Firefox 73.0 (64 bit) on Ubuntu. I was very happy with that until a few weeks.

Today, Firefox is taking too much of the available memory and make my system almost unusable. I have browsed the FAQ and made all proposals to reduce the memory. However, after a fresh restart and only 6 tabs and 5 add-ons, there is still a child process that takes 26.5G on virtual memory while Firefox Task Manager does not display that much memory (see screenshots).

How can I reduce the memory consumption of Firefox ?

Thanks a lot

Htop

Firefox Task Manager

Improve this question
3
  • Virtual memory isn’t physical memory. What you see is normal.
    – Daniel B
    Commented Mar 4, 2020 at 9:46
  • I know it is not physical memory but still, the system is slowed down when Firefox ran. I though the virtual memory was the most relevant measure in that case. I am also astonished by the number of child processes displayed by Htop.
    – gervais.b
    Commented Mar 4, 2020 at 9:54
  • 1
    Those are threads, not processes.
    – Daniel B
    Commented Mar 4, 2020 at 10:33

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2

Firefox allocates lot of virtual memory when using WebAssembly. More details: Firefox bug report uBlock Origin bug report

You can ignore this or do the following:

  1. Disable firefox extension(s), for example: uBlock Origin
  2. about:memory -> Free memory -> Minimize memory usage
Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .