Browser Memory Issue (Firefox specific)

[motherfucker]

TL;DR, Firefox uses a stupid amount of memory while it's running, sometimes opening up to 10 executable files.
It can make my computer run painfully slow.

I've tried deleting FF and clearing all files to start fresh, but it always ends up the same way. Everytime I download it, there's obviously something left over as it has a few bookmarks from the previous installation.

I figured there would be an easy fix for this, but every explanation tells me the same thing, and it never works well.

Has anyone else experienced something like this?

If you need more information, I'm happy to post some, but it seems like a general issue.
(I do find that even Chrome does this too when loaded on the same computer.)

[aaronsd]

Well this is an interesting question!

It's due to the nature of multiple content processing path that both Firefox and Chrome took starting a while ago. Different tabs are assigned to different processes to try make the browsing experience a lot smoother by using up more of the processing power of the browser as needed. But of course the flipside of that is that it uses more resources and leaves rest for the rest of the system.

I suppose you are limited by either your CPU cores or RAM you have. Either way have you looked into the setting on this article here specifically and set it at a low value. Try decreasing the value from 10 towards 1 until you achieve a desired outcome with some testing: (you need an account to see links)

[Accelerator]

How much RAM are we talking about? My usual browser session takes about 2.5+ GB to the point that sometimes I have to close the process because even my cursor movement becomes sluggish.

Of course the amount of RAM Firefox (any browser in general) uses will depend on the tabs you have open though, JavaScript and media heavy pages (e.g. FB and Twitter with the timeline full of posts/YouTube, etc) will take more RAM than a Google search tab.

Regarding the bookmarks/leftovers seems like you're only uninstalling the program but leaving your profile intact or somehow have sync active.
If you're using Windows your profile is located in %AppData%\Mozilla\Firefox or something like that. You can check exactly where it is by typing about:profiles in the URL bar