- Open the Firefox browser and click on the three-line menu icon in the top right corner of your window.
- Click on the question mark icon.
- Choose “About Firefox.”
- If your Firefox is not updated to the latest version, it will begin downloading the latest version. If it is updated, you will see a message that reads, “Firefox is up to date.”
If updating did not work in your favor, too, then move on to the next potential solution.
Turn on Safe Mode:
There is a Safe Mode in Firefox that disables all extensions working in the background, and your configuration is set to default. Try turning it on to solve the high memory usage issue.
- Open the Firefox browser and click on the three-line menu icon in the top right corner of your window.
- Click on the question mark icon.
- Choose “Restart with Add-ons Disabled.”
- In the confirmation message that pops up, choose “Start in Safe Mode.”
If you can use Firefox with normal RAM usage after turning on Safe Mode, then the problem is definitely with your configuration or one of your extensions. If Safe Mode also does not work for you, then try the next solution.
Switch to default theme:
There are several options when it comes to themes for the Firefox browser, and the default theme is the least demanding of all when it comes to resources. So if you are using a theme on your Firefox browser, try switching back to the default theme. That might help you with your issue.
- Open the Firefox browser and click on the three-line menu icon in the top right corner of your window.
- Click on “Add-ons.”
- Click on the “Appearance” or “Themes” tab on the left and choose the default theme on the right pane.
After you are done selecting the default theme, check whether your high memory usage issue is resolved or not. If it is still there, then try the next solution.
Disable extensions:
Faulty extensions can be the cause of many issues on a web browser. High RAM usage could also be a potential issue.
- Open the Firefox browser and click on the three-line menu icon in the top right corner of your window.
- Click on “Add-ons.”
- Click on the “Extensions” tab on the left pane.
- A list of extensions installed on your browser will show up. Click on Disable next to every one of them and restart the browser.
- If the issue is resolved, then go back to Extensions and enable them one by one again. Restart the browser every time you enable one particular extension. By doing so, you will find the problematic extension, which you can easily remove from your browser.
If disabling all extensions also did help with your issue, then move on to the next potential solution.
Disable specific plugins:
Apart from extensions, plugins can also cause memory issues in Firefox.
- Open the Firefox browser and click on the three-line menu icon in the top right corner of your window.
- Click on “Add-ons.”
- Click on the “Plugins” tab on the left pane.
- Next to each plugin in the list, you will see a drop-down menu. Choose “Never Activate” for each one of these plugins and make sure to restart your browser every time you deactivate one particular plugin.
- Keep on deactivating plugins one after the other until your memory issue is resolved or you run out of plugins to disable.
If you find the problematic plugin causing a memory usage issue, then turn on all the other plugins and keep that particular plugin disabled all the time. However, if disabling all the plugins also did not solve your memory issue, try the next potential solution.
Toggle Off Hardware Acceleration:
Enabling hardware acceleration means Firefox dumping certain tasks like page rendering entirely on the PC’s hardware. This can improve the loading speed, but it can also take a load on the memory. To resolve the memory usage issue, you could try disabling it entirely.
- Open the Firefox browser and click on the three-line menu icon in the top right corner of your window.
- Click on “Options.”
- You will open up the preferences window. Here, you will be in the general tab by default.
- In the general tab, scroll to “Performance,” under which you will find “Use recommended performance settings.” Uncheck that box.
- Right below that, you will also find “Use hardware acceleration when available.” Uncheck that feature too.
- Now restart your browser entirely.
After the restart, check whether the RAM usage issue is resolved or not. If you are still stuck with high memory usage, then move on to the next potential solution.
Close unnecessary tabs:
Having numerous tabs open in the Firefox browser will only mean more work for the browser, and more will be the requirement for memory. At most, we only need a couple of tabs for our, so opening up 20 or 30 is not a wise choice. So close every tab in your browser that is unnecessary and see whether that solves your high memory usage issue.
If it does not, then try the next potential solution.
There is indeed a built-in feature in Firefox that forces the web browser to use as much less memory as possible. So you can give this feature a try too.
- Open the Firefox browser and enter “about:memory” in the adddress bar. Then hit Enter.
- In the free memory panel, you will find an option that reads “Minimize memory usage.” Click on it.
Now check whether the RAM issue is resolved or not. If it is still using up a lot from your RAM, then try the next potential solution.
Change browser settings:
You can also try changing several additional settings in the browser.
- Open the Firefox browser and enter “about:config” in the adddress bar. Then hit Enter.
- A list of options will appear here with different values assigned to them. In the values assigned to these options in the list, make the following changes:
browser.cache.memory.capacity to 0
browser.cache.memory.enable to false
browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers to 0
browser.tabs.animate to disable
browser.sessionstore.max_concurrent_tabs to 0
- After this, restart the Firefox browser.
Now check whether the RAM usage issue is resolved or not. If it is still there, then move on to the next solution mentioned below.
Reduce memory usage when minimized:
You can even choose to reduce the memory usage when the browser is minimized.
- Open the Firefox browser and enter “about:config” in the adddress bar. Then hit Enter.
- A list of options will appear here with different values assigned to them. Create a new option here by right-click on the list of options and Choosing New > Boolean.
- Enter “config.trim_on_minimize” as the preference name and click on Ok.
- Set the value as true and click on Ok here too.
Now restart your browser and check whether the memory usage issue is resolved or not. If it is not resolved, then try the next potential solution mentioned below.
Change disk capacity value:
- Open the Firefox browser and enter “about:config” in the adddress bar. Then hit Enter.
- A list of options will appear here with different values assigned to them. Locate “browser.cache.disk.capacity” in this list, and when you find it, double-click on it.
- Then change the value to anything less than what was already there as default.
Restart the browser and check whether your issue is resolved or not. If it is still there, then try the next potential solution.
Reduce Firefox session history:
When you move from one page to another in a single tab, you get the forward, and backward buttons at the top turned on. This is because the Firefox browser can retain information about 50 websites, and all of it is stored in the form of session history in the RAM itself. No one really requires information about 50 sessions in a tab. So you should reduce it and check whether that solves the memory drain issue or not.
- Open the Firefox browser and enter “about:config” in the adddress bar. Then hit Enter.
- A list of options will appear here with different values assigned to them. Locate “browser.sessionhistory.max_entries” in this list, and when you find it, double-click on it.
- Enter a value lower than 50 that, according to you, is enough for maintaining session history. Click on Ok after that.
If you still have memory usage issues with your Firefox browser, try the final simple solution mentioned below.
Refresh Firefox:
There is a built-in feature to refresh the entire browser. Give this feature a try, too, to fix your memory usage problem.
- Open the Firefox browser and enter “about:support” in the adddress bar. Then hit Enter.
- Click on “Refresh Firefox” after that.
- In the confirmation window that pops up, choose “Refresh Firefox.”
- Finally, click on Finish once the browser restarts.
Now, these are all solutions related to the Firefox browser. Surely one of the fixes mentioned above will help you out with your excessive RAM usage problem. If none of the solutions work, you should either go for a different browser like Google Chrome or Opera. You can even opt to increase your RAM by simply putting in another RAM stick in your system’s motherboard.
So that is what you can to fix the high memory usage issue of Firefox. If you have any questions or queries about this article, then comment down below, and we will get back to you. Also, be sure to check out our other articles on iPhone tips and tricks, Android tips and tricks, PC tips and tricks, and much more for more useful information.
