I tried making switch to Google Chrome recently when I had mentioned about the unhealthy amounts of memory consumption by Firefox in the post – Is Firefox growing Old?
Although the RAM on my system is a healthy 2.5GB, I still find the memory hogging nature of “world’s best browser” a bit strange. In my search for an alternative browser, I used Google Chrome with the relatively new Chrome extensions. It worked good though I missed the Firefox way of doing things.
Mostly, I missed Firebug and No! Firebug light for Chrome isn’t half as decent as the full blown addon for Firefox. So, I was back with Firefox trying to find some way to make it work like a normal application instead of hijacking my system RAM for itself.
How large is Firefox’s Memory Footprint
Firefox occupied a considerable chunk of memory in use which is a reason for worry for NetBook users and those with ancient machines alike. Given below is the screenshot of Task Manager displaying the amount of Memory occupied by Firefox.
Firefox was occupying a very healthy 128MB of memory within just 5 minutes of its running time and with just 4 tabs open. That’s a pretty normal scenario. And as it is evident, Firefox is the heaviest contender among all applications!
How to Reduce Firefox Memory Usage
To reduce Firefox’s memory usage all you have to do is download a simple addon called Memory Fox, Memory Fox keeps an eye on your browser’s memory usage and notices when Firefox starts edging toward user-preset resource limits. When it does, the extension springs into action, automatically flushing your memory to recover space and keep your browser from slowing down.
Memory Fox may not make a noticeable difference in your browsing speed if you’ve got a souped up computer, but it’s a terrific add-on for machines without a lot of extra RAM to sacrifice to the ‘fox. It’s an experimental extension, Windows only.
Given below is a screenshot of Firefox after activating Memory Fox :
So now its at 69MB a reduction of 59MB thats a huge saving in memory usage!
You can download the addon from the Mozilla Addons Page here.
How did you find this application? Would you like to share your experience with us?
Ben
AnnNonymus
Arun Basil Lal
Bhanu @ HackingAr...
Jatinder
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Ok! I dint really felt the need to observe that! I have 3 GB RAM so it is not a concern, but I will surely Use Memory Fox to reduce the load on RAM
most of the internet users dont have 3 gb ram….
so good for people like me…
Thnanks
@iks is right..!! i don’t even have a 1 GB RAM..504 MB used out of the installed 512 MB..and still my firefox + WinXP Sp3..rocks..!! (primarily coz when i am using my browser for surfing…i dont use any other app besides media player for songs and sometimes a parallel tennis game..!!
Thanks for the nice plugin, i will surely give firefox a retry after adding the addon. Though i would like to mention that with 4 tabs open in the chrome browser i almost had 125 mb of memory space used up as chrome uses different processes for each tab.
That Firefox issue about memory hogging is really a pain. And it’s been there for quite some time now. I wonder why the Firefox developers aren’t addressing it quickly. This addon will at least provide some relief till that happens.
But even with that problem, since I don’t have memory constraints as more new systems don’t, I continue to use Firefox as I find it quite good for my use.
Wow! Firefox uses up tons of memory on your pc. I have 2 GB of ram on my laptop and with normal usage, firefox uses about 200K. The only time Firefox has used 1oo+MB of ram on my system is when 150+tabs were open:)
200K Memory? Are you kidding me? What version of Firefox are you using. And browsing 150+ Tabs with only 100MB+ Memory usage in Firefox?!!!
This is either an over glorified exaggeration , or a pretty bad attempt to save Firefox , or a wannabe SPAM comment , or a n00b comment.
My apologies for being harsh. I would not buy it nor do I think would any of our readers.
HonestI am using Firefox 3.5.7 and my comment was not: an over glorified exaggeration, a pretty bad attempt to save Firefox, a wannabe SPAM comment , or a n00b comment. Here are some screenshots of the task manager and how many tabs I am using right now (via my Flickr gallery):
Task Manager:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2726/4270604280_238eb8ee0b_o.png
Tabs:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4008/4270604304_58a6fb140a_o.png
If you want specifics about my memory: 2 GB of DDR2-800 ram
Lol! Wow Ben. I liked your spirit and I am glad you left a comment on ProgrammingKid.com, Welcome to the community. Now, well as I said, the comment you wrote had wrong facts. As I see from your screenshot!
It displays Firefox.exe as using 220,144K of memory during 1 tab open right?. Now Ben, I would like to point out that :-
1MB = 1024KB , so essentially, if you would check. It comes out to be 220,144KB / 1024 = 215MB so, my post holds true.Its 215MB with only one Tab, Ben. And if I am correct with 150+ tabs it would have been 1GB of memory! So, I would suggest if you could verify your claim of 220,144K memory. Thats 215 MB and that’s nowhere near 200KB you see.
Exactly thats what my post talks about. I hope this clear the confusion. So, I stand corrected
It was not a SPAM comment nor an over glorified exaggeration, it was just a n00b comment 
All jokes apart. Hope to see you more often!
Sorry about that, I realized my mistake right after i posted my reply:) You were right. I have opened 150+ tabs before though:) BTW, I just subscribed to your blog and will be around more often:)
whenever i use firefox, most of the times its like 5+ along with facebook on one tab(always accessing)..mozlla goes slow on its part, like each and every operation goes slow…is that because of the memory allocation only..??
humm… i got 4gb of ram, which should be about 4000 MB around, so i guess if a couple hundred mb of ram is eaten by firefox, it should not matter much
on a serious note, firefox should work out their resource management better… their best browser status depends more on the extensions these days…