Massive memory leak in Firefox 94.0.1?

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John Gray
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Massive memory leak in Firefox 94.0.1?

Post by John Gray »

Is anyone else experiencing this? On as-yet-unidentified occasions, my machine slows right down and the cursor jerks from one place to another. If I should - eventually- get Task Manager open, I find that the multitude of Firefox tasks (two or more per open tab) is using all my 16 GB of memory!

Is there any news of a fix / update to Firefox?
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HansV
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Re: Massive memory leak in Firefox 94.0.1?

Post by HansV »

I use 94.0.1 as my standard browser on my desktop (Windows 11) and laptop (Windows 10 21H1), but I haven't experienced this.

I currently have 6 tabs open and Firefox uses 582 MB of memory...
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Re: Massive memory leak in Firefox 94.0.1?

Post by John Gray »

It might be a specific web-page, then... I can't remember when I last had a memory problem with Firefox.
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Re: Massive memory leak in Firefox 94.0.1?

Post by stuck »

I've got only one tab open as I start to type, displaying this thread. Task Manager shows FF 94.01 is using about 340MB, across six FF processes.

Adding more four more tabs takes the memory usage up to about 675 Mb across nine processes. Starting a video on the BBC News tabs adds two more processes and the memory usage goes up to about 850MB.

Ken

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Re: Massive memory leak in Firefox 94.0.1?

Post by StuartR »

I have seen this with earlier versions of Firefox, but not with 94.0.1

I currently have 13 Firefox tabs open, and Firefox has 8 processes using 1,500 MB of memory

When I have seen this it usually cleared when I closed the Facebook tab and reopened it
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Re: Massive memory leak in Firefox 94.0.1?

Post by Argus »

John Gray wrote:
14 Nov 2021, 11:29
It might be a specific web-page, then... I can't remember when I last had a memory problem with Firefox.
Most likely. I agree with Stuart; i.e. have seen this, but not now.
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Re: Massive memory leak in Firefox 94.0.1?

Post by kdock »

John Gray wrote:
14 Nov 2021, 11:29
I can't remember when I last had a memory problem...
Really? Nobody picked that up and ran with it?

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Re: Massive memory leak in Firefox 94.0.1?

Post by John Gray »

kdock wrote:
15 Nov 2021, 01:41
John Gray wrote:
14 Nov 2021, 11:29
I can't remember when I last had a memory problem...
Really? Nobody picked that up and ran with it?
Kim
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Re: Massive memory leak in Firefox 94.0.1?

Post by StuartR »

John Gray wrote:
15 Nov 2021, 07:41
Yes - that's another old tagline...!
I'd forgotten all about it
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Re: Massive memory leak in Firefox 94.0.1?

Post by Argus »

kdock wrote:
15 Nov 2021, 01:41
John Gray wrote:
14 Nov 2021, 11:29
I can't remember when I last had a memory problem...
Really? Nobody picked that up and ran with it?

Kim
Can't remember seeing that.
&
If you can't remember the first time, it never happened.

Memory; it reminds about how I think J. Walkenbach once wrote on his (Excel) blog that he was doing some research, I think, and found some nifty code, and ... in the end found that he was the one who had written the thing.
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Re: Massive memory leak in Firefox 94.0.1?

Post by BobH »

The memory thing didn't slip my mind, this time.

When John posted about Firefox and memory leaks, I checked my open Firefox (94.0.1) to find 12 tabs open and about 1.5MB of memory consumed by them; but I was not experiencing the cursor problem. I have noticed that my response has been slowed in Firefox. Last night, when I was attempting to do a CCleaner, it kept telling me that I needed to close Firefox; yet Firefox was closed and I could find not instance of it in Task Manager. CCleaner would not proceed.

After restarting the system and loading up as before, I was able to run CCleaner after closing Firefox and Thunderbird. Was this a symptom of a memory leak? I don't know, but something about Firefox was causing me a problem in CCleaner before I rebooted.

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Re: Massive memory leak in Firefox 94.0.1?

Post by John Gray »

Back to the original topic.
While working happily in Word, everything slowed down again. Eventually I started Task Manager, and got...
.
Firefox memory.jpg
.
Closing one of the Firefox tabs caused the memory usage to drop right down. :hairout:
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Re: Massive memory leak in Firefox 94.0.1?

Post by StuartR »

Wow, what was open in the tab you closed?
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John Gray
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Re: Massive memory leak in Firefox 94.0.1?

Post by John Gray »

Just Gloucestershire Live with a yellow Breaking News banner at the bottom of the webpage (which is rare, fortunately...). It had been sitting there, unlooked at, for about ten minutes.
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Re: Massive memory leak in Firefox 94.0.1?

Post by HansV »

That site does cause a memory leak!
I had 11 tabs open in Firefox, at 650 MB memory use. I clicked your link, and memory use started increasing rapidly. Within a minute, it was 4880 MB total, of which 4220 MB for Gloucestershire Live. After that, the increase slowed down. The tab also uses up CPU continuously, but not very much.
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Re: Massive memory leak in Firefox 94.0.1?

Post by HansV »

Ten minutes later, the tab uses just over 4510 MB. So a much slower increase, but still rising.
Best wishes,
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Re: Massive memory leak in Firefox 94.0.1?

Post by HansV »

Whoa! It suddenly and quickly rose to over 11,000 MB. I then closed the tab and Firefox's memory use quickly went down to normal.
Best wishes,
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Re: Massive memory leak in Firefox 94.0.1?

Post by stuck »

I confirm Hans' experience with that link. FF memory usage jumped enormously when I opened it and then it climbed steadily even though I dismissed the breaking news banner and then did nothing else to that tab. Closed the tab and all was well again.

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Re: Massive memory leak in Firefox 94.0.1?

Post by John Gray »

Thanks, all - another technical triumph for our local "news outlet". </snark>
Is this the sort of thing which Firefox ought to be able to detect and prevent happening, or is it simply the fault of the perpetrators, reachplc.com?
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Re: Massive memory leak in Firefox 94.0.1?

Post by stuck »

Dunno but while my local 'news outlet' (part of Newsquest) has many failings, this particular problem does not seem to be one of them :grin: