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I love Firefox for its add-ons. I have a lot of them installed, which obviously increases memory use. But it seems that some add-ons are better than others in that department. Does anyone know a way to figure out approximately how much memory each add-on is using? Obviously, I could disable them all and try them one at a time, but I'm hoping for an easier way...

tghw
  • 874

5 Answers5

17

I usually deal with Firefox memory issues by installing two different Firefox'es on my computer. The first one is the default Firefox and the other is portable Firefox.

I install all the addons I am ever going to use on the portable Firefox (FF) I install the addons which are used almost daily on the default Firefox.

This way I can use the addon just by switching over to the portable Firefox.

If this is not the solution you are looking for then try these addons

  1. AFOM - AFOM recovers Memory Leakage within the Firefox application. (Windows only)
    NOTE: This add-on has been removed by its author.

  2. CacheViewer - Allows searching and sorting memory and disk cache files.
    CacheViewer is discontinued please use CacheViewer Continued.
    EDIT: I tried it, and it shows all the files used by Firefox in the cache which eat up precious memory.

  3. bosskey - Add Boss Key, Minimize/Close to tray and memory auto cleaning to Firefox.

  4. RAMBack - RAMBack will cause Firefox to issue an internal notification to free up memory that is otherwise held for performance purposes.

Sachin Chavan
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Rishi
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4

There's an extension called Leak Monitor that monitors add-ons for a certain type of memory leak...not exactly what you're looking for, but it's a start!

Andy Mikula
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3

Only slightly less tedious:

  • Check memory usage of Firefox + all plugins.
  • Disable them all & check memory usage - difference is due to plugins.
  • Enable half a dozen (say), check memory usage.
  • If the increase is not too great repeat with the next batch.
  • If the increase is a large proportion of the usage then disable that batch and check each one individually.
  • Repeat until all plugins added.

Obviously this is probably a non starter if you have lots of plugins.

Searching for more information on those plugins might tell you something as well.

ChrisF
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0

Firefox memory leak detection tool

Leak Monitor

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance:Leak_Tools

http://blog.pavlov.net/2008/03/11/firefox-3-memory-usage/

joe
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Mozilla released Firefox 15.0 today which has huge memory management improvements that should hugely reduce the amount of memory Firefox uses, especially after closing tabs.

You can grab it from the main download site: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/

STW
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