Tab Unloading in Firefox 93

#1

Post by mthermidor » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

Tab Unloading in Firefox 93
hacks.mozilla.org

Re: Tab Unloading in Firefox 93

#2

Post by ihsw » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

It'd be great if this was tunable and usable in non-OOM scenarios.

Re: Tab Unloading in Firefox 93

#3

Post by ksec » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:36 PM UTC

I left Firefox for a number of years already. Did Firefox changed its Tab Unloading behaviour? I remember Firefox will unload Tabs that are inactive after a period of time. So having OOM crash on Firefox was a relatively rare occurrence even when I had hundreds if not thousands of tabs.

Re: Tab Unloading in Firefox 93

#4

Post by csmpltn » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

> "On Windows, out-of-memory (OOM) situations are responsible for a significant number of the browser and content process crashes reported by our users."

You got this wrong, yet again. What causes the memory to run out in the first place? That is what you should be fixing.

Re: Tab Unloading in Firefox 93

#5

Post by Lammy » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

I can't reply to the dead comment here, but if you're looking for a tunable version of this functionality try https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-disc...

Re: Tab Unloading in Firefox 93

#6

Post by mikepurvis » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

csmpltn wrote: post #4

> "On Windows, out-of-memory (OOM) situations are responsible for a significant number of the browser and content process crashes reported by our users." You got this wrong, yet again. What causes the memory to run out in the first place? That is what you should be fixing.

Why do computers keep getting more and more memory? 640KB should be enough for everyone, if people would just fix whatever is using up all the memory. /s

Not all OOM situations are because of a malfunction or leak.

Re: Tab Unloading in Firefox 93

#7

Post by cottager2 » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

csmpltn wrote: post #4

> "On Windows, out-of-memory (OOM) situations are responsible for a significant number of the browser and content process crashes reported by our users." You got this wrong, yet again. What causes the memory to run out in the first place? That is what you should be fixing.

Surely you must admit that even an extremely memory efficient implementation of a set of tabs has a physical limit on how many can be open if they’re all loaded into memory.

Re: Tab Unloading in Firefox 93

#8

Post by kevingadd » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

ksec wrote: post #3

I left Firefox for a number of years already. Did Firefox changed its Tab Unloading behaviour? I remember Firefox will unload Tabs that are inactive after a period of time. So having OOM crash on Firefox was a relatively rare occurrence even when I had hundreds if not thousands of tabs.

I've never seen Firefox unload an inactive tab without my permission, but it looks like according to the docs it's had a 'memory is low, unload tabs' mechanism since 2019. It looks like that behavior was further adjusted in this release, though it's not clear to me what the difference is.

Re: Tab Unloading in Firefox 93

#9

Post by kevingadd » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:43 PM UTC

csmpltn wrote: post #4

> "On Windows, out-of-memory (OOM) situations are responsible for a significant number of the browser and content process crashes reported by our users." You got this wrong, yet again. What causes the memory to run out in the first place? That is what you should be fixing.

I have approximately 300 tabs open. How much memory should that use? What's your answer based on?

Re: Tab Unloading in Firefox 93

#10

Post by MayeulC » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:44 PM UTC

csmpltn wrote: post #4

> "On Windows, out-of-memory (OOM) situations are responsible for a significant number of the browser and content process crashes reported by our users." You got this wrong, yet again. What causes the memory to run out in the first place? That is what you should be fixing.

You seem to assume it comes from the browser. That is not necessarily the case: the user might have launched a demanding game that suddenly increases memory pressure, making Firefox OOM. FF will now more gradually release memory to the OS.