This piece of art I call:
"Closing a Browser, 2024"
White ASCII on transparent canvas.
@fribbledom It's so fucking annoying. Why they can't just put a memory limit in those things like any user-respecting app, I cannot fathom.
I'm only ever looking at a handful of tabs at the same time, for heaven's sake!
Firefox is particularly bad (can't say for other browsers) because they don't garbage-collect closed tabs. Not even when you _tell it to optimize_ on about memory! 🤬 It just keeps growing and growing until system memory is full -- and not even _then_ does it give way! AAARG!
@OmegaPolice
Try this extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-discard/
Firefox does some of it itself so I've never seen it grow indefinitely, but this one limits it further. I've configured it to only allow five tabs to remain active — probably not for everyone, but it works for me!
@fribbledom
@m0xee @fribbledom (That's me assuming they don't just have a straight-up memory leak.)
I _sort of_ follow the reasoning -- if they would ever release all that memory when it's needed. But nope. Restarting FF consistently brings back 10GB RAM (-ish) but, somehow, opening a second Miro board can freeze my entire machine.
Miro is a true memory sinner btw. Really, really awful. An empty board starts somewhere around 500GB, if I can trust FF to show meaningful numbers.
@OmegaPolice
Yes, it uses tab unloading, it just gives you more customisation and fine-grained control over it. I have to admit, I don't open many "heavy" website — could be the real reason I never experience these leaks, but the machine I'm typing this on is decade-old laptop with only 16 gigs of RAM, it has an uptime of over a month, I'm not certain that Firefox kept running the entire time though, but it currently has about two dozens of open tabs, most of which are unloaded and…
@fribbledom
@OmegaPolice
…it uses just about half a gigabyte of real RAM (resident, virtual memory allocated is still above 4 Gb of course) — as you can see, it's very modest, Thunderbird consumes more even when idle, and software based on webkit-gtk can consume about 2 Gb easily just after opening a couple of pages. I'm using Firefox in Void Linux and I stopped updating it at FF124 — could also be the reason why it's different here.
@OmegaPolice
I don't remember experiencing these insane leaks for quite some time already and AutoTabDiscard usually helps freeing lots of RAM, no need for a complete restart.
@m0xee The main different seems to be the sheer number of open (if unloaded) tabs I have. There are several dozen "resident" tabs at least, some of those huge-ass apps. 😅 I also create _many_ ephemeral tabs, probably hundreds each day.
For some reason, Firefox keeps data of unloaded and even _closed_ tabs in memory; at least that's the only explanation I can come up with for what I'm seeing.
I'll give that plugin a shot, thanks for the pointer!
I currently rely on the unloader addon of TabTree
@m0xee @fribbledom Is that different from "tab unloading"? 'Cause I already do that.
Simple observation: System memory 90% full. Close FF, open FF. Same tabs; fewer loaded, of course. Observable effect similar to OP. Then, over several days, usage grows.
I once found an issue comment stating that, indeed, they consider this a _feature_! Idle memory doesn't help anybody, after all, right? Better use it for good! Maybe I visit the same random page again this year! You never know! /s