Mozilla Firefox is slow: how to speed it up?

firefox is slow

If your web browser firefox is slow and you want it to run like good old Sonic, then you should detect the origin of this lack of performance, since it can be for several reasons. And once detected, give a solution. In this tutorial you will see some of the most frequent solutions to this type of problem.

Firefox is slow: Possible causes and solutions

Firefox out of date

It is important that you always check the version of Firefox you have installed, and check that it is the latest. Keep your web browser up to date not only does it bring new features, bug fixes or security patches, there may also be performance optimizations.

To check this, you can follow these steps:

  1. Open Firefox
  2. Go to the menu (the three lines that appear on the top right)
  3. Click on Help
  4. Then in About Firefox
  5. There you will see the current version
  6. What should you compare with latest official version available

Firefox is slow because hardware acceleration is disabled

It is usually another of the most frequent causes why Firefox is slow. In Linux it comes with this option disabled by default, but you can activate it like this:

  1. open firefox
  2. In the address bar put: about: preferences and press enter
  3. Go to the General tab
  4. Scroll down until you see the Performance option
  5. Disable the option Use recommended performance settings
  6. Brand Use hardware acceleration when available
  7. Restart the browser

Firefox is slow because it is collecting data in the background

It is possible that the reason that Firefox is slow is because it is doing other things in the background, such as collect certain data. To stop this:

  1. open firefox
  2. In the address bar put: about: preferences and press enter
  3. Go to the Privacy and Security tab
  4. Scroll down to see the following options in the Firefox Data Collection and Usage field
  5. Deactivate the options:
    • Allow Firefox to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla
    • Allow Firefox to install and run studies
  6. Restart the browser

Minimize RAM usage

If you are having problems with Firefox's use of RAM memory, you can do this:

  1. open firefox
  2. In the address bar put: about: memory and press enter
  3. Press on Minimize memory usage

Tab Management

It is likely that your Firefox browser is slow because of the tab management open. You already know that keeping multiple tabs open has an impact on RAM usage. To try to fix this, you can use some plugins like Auto Tab Discard.

Other causes

If your Firefox is slow and you don't really know why, and the above hasn't worked for you. It is probably due to misconfigurations, installed themes, addons that slow it down, preferences, etc. Can refresh the browser so that it goes back to how it was at the beginning, but you must know that you will lose all that. The steps are:

  1. Open Firefox
  2. Go to the menu (the three lines that appear on the top right)
  3. Click on Help
  4. Then Troubleshooting Mode
  5. Hit Refresh Firefox

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  1.   Liam said

    Firefox has improved a lot in these months. Unfortunately (for the fox) I am very happy with Brave (for 3 years).