Make Firefox run smoother

As we know, Firefox has problem with the memory usage. It makes the Firefox load slow, use too many resources and drag our computer down. Here are 5 tips on how you can use to handle and improve Firefox memory usage.

1. Reduce memory usage when minimize
This tip will reduce the memory usage when each time you minimize your Firefox. Actually what it does is, Firefox will let Windows to claiming back the memory used when it minimize.

1. Start up Firefox
2. Type in about:config in the address bar and hit Enter
3. Right click and choose New > Boolean
4. Type config.trim_on_minimize in the pop-up box and hit Enter
5. Select True and hit Enter.
6. Restart your Firefox

2. Fixed cache capacity
Every time new page is loaded, Firefox will cache the page so it doesn’t need to load again to be redisplayed. By default, this setting was set to -1 which mean, Firefox use the cache memory depends on your RAM size. Here is how to fix the cache capacity use for your Firefox.

1. Start up Firefox
2. Type about:config in the address bar and hit Enter
3. In the filter, enter this string browser.cache.memory.capacity
4. If you set to 0, Firefox will not cache any pages. If you want to customize to other value, read here.

Note: browser.cache.memory.enable must be True if you decide to change the integer.

3. Limit pages stored in memory
Every page you viewed will be stored in memory. Although it looks like the same as cache, but it is differ. Firefox will save the page you visited in memory to let improve its performance when you click Back and Forward button. The string that handles this setting is browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers

1. Start up Firefox
2. Type about:config in the address bar and hit Enter
3. In the filter, enter this string browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers
4. By default, it was set to -1 which mean, Firefox will automatically decide maximum pages to be stored in memory. Change the value to 0 will stop Firefox from store any pages in memory. If you want to use other value, read here for more info.

4. Use less extension
This is really simple tips. Use to many extensions will let your Firefox to use more RAM. Use only extensions that you usually use to minimum the memory usage. Uninstall unwanted extensions because some of the extensions can cause memory leak. And upgrade your extensions to the latest version may fix the problems.

Extra Tips
Actually I want to make this as tip number 5 but it is not really a tip. It is just extra information about Firefox in dealing with memory. If you want to know your current memory usage, you can type this

about:cache?device=memory

in the address bar and hit Enter. Firefox will display your current number of entries, maximum storage size, storage in use and inactive storage. [tags]firefox, tips, tricks, memory, ram, extensions[/tags]