Does your Firefox web browser cause you headaches with memory use? Does it grow to over 1GB in memory over time and then slow down immensely. This may be your solution.
Firefox by default “caches” each tab you have open so that you can quickly use the back and forward buttons to flip through history. Depending on the memory of your machine this is usually set to as much as 8 pages of history per tab. Over time this can really balloon the memory footprint and cause the whole browser to literally slow to crawl.
Turning off this caching, may make back and forward buttons act slowly, but when is the last time you actively used browsing history anyways? Using applications and pinned tabs makes back and forward history browsing pretty obsolete. I turned off this feature and my browser definitely seems snappier even with 20-30 tabs open (!)
HOWTO:
- Type about:config in your Firefox address bar.
- Scroll down until you find the variable Browser.sessionhistory.max total viewers. You will probably find the value of (-1), which is automatic adjustment to up to 8 (based on a 4GB memory available to machine).
- Right click on the value and modify to 0 or 1 (keep 0 pages in history or 1 page max).
UPDATE: Here are other possible solutions to more memory issues with Firefox.
