Recent Firefox crashes

TidBITS Talk
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I am having a lot of crashes with Firefox in recent days.

Is it the age of my iMac? (June 2017, iMac18,3)

Is it the memory in the iMac? (64 GB from OWC)

Is it my old operating system? (Ventura 13.7.8)

Is it the version of Firefox? (Version 144.0)

Don’t recall crashes with Firefox for many years including on several older Macs. In general, I have preferred Firefox over Safari for most of my web activity.

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It probably is something to do with what’s saved in your Firefox profile. But what?

Before experimenting, you may want to make a copy of your profile. There are two profile folders: one is for cache type data, the other is more permanent. Entering about:profiles in the URL field will show you the paths to both. The cache is “Local Directory”, the other is “Root Directory”. At least I think so, I’m not on my Mac.

From here you can also try launching Firefox in a different profile, for testing purposes.

What I’d suggest is:

  1. Backup the profiles, just in case. Or maybe you already have a backup.
  2. Settings > Privacy & Security > Cookies and Site Data > Clear Data. Select to clear all of the temporary cached files and pages. You don’t need to go nuclear and clear cookies.
  3. If that doesn’t fix it, try disabling all of your Firefox add-ons.
  4. If that doesn’t fix it, close Firefox and rename the “Local Directory” profile; the one that holds all the cache data. Relaunch Firefox.
  5. If that doesn’t fix it, then you’re into a harder problem to solve. What you can do is temporarily create a new profile and see if it works; that would mean the problem is definitely profile related.

Beware: if you have Firefox Sync on, and you are testing by making destructive changes, it can propogate those changes to other synched profiles. You may want to turn off the sync.

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I too am on version 144.0 of Firefox and using it on a MacMini M4 Running Tahoe 26.0.1

I also have used Firefox for years and on many MacOs versions and different Mac desktops and laptops. I’ve rarely had a problem.

In the last week or two, I’ve had extremely regularly repeated problems such as:

  • Very slow startup of Firefox from closed
  • Freezing of Firefox while starting up with ‘not responding’ message and having to use ‘Force Quit’
  • Freezing during a session after it has been operating o.k.

In frustration, I switched to Safari, which I’ve rarely used despite it being installed still, only to find problems with it, not least sudden problems logging in to some regularly used sites. So, I switched back to Firefox and the Safari problems disappeared but Firefox ones returned … as one might expect, I guess.

I also have a 2011 MacBook Pro running High Siera MacOs 10.13.6 and Firefox 116.26 Extended support release - no problems on that machine with Firefox at all.

So, on the basis of what you’ve provided:

  • Can’t see that it would be the older operating system
  • Doubt that it would be the memory - though both of my machines have only 16gb memory - the MBPro was upgraded with memory from OWC and never had a problem with product from them
  • Doubt that is it the age of your Mac, given the age of my MBPro

My ‘perhaps’ conclusions - though I’m no techie and claim no special expertise, just considering the details we have:

  • Incompatibility between Ventura and the 144.0 version of Firefox / but then why with Tahoe?
  • An issue with Firefox 144.0 - Would be interesting to know if anyone else has this problems with other OS / hardware configurations

Please excuse me if those of you who are experts out there can see something ignorant or stupid that I’ve concluded. As I said, no expertise just used Apple since Apple II+ and trying to help. Now 78 yrs old and admit my mind is failing. :-)

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I have noticed crappy performance and long delays with Firefox 143 on my laptop running Monterey and degraded performane with Firefox 144 on my desktop running Sequoia. I read somewhere this morning that Firefox is now heavily using AI, which confirms some popups offering thing that I don’t want, like previews of web sites. I’ve been using Firefox for years, but it’s been going downhill. I suspect the AI may be the problem because I have had other problems with AI, but have not tried to track it down. Would like to here more