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How can I quickly "unclog" firefox when it runs out of memory (with 1000/2000 tabs) (youtu.be)

submitted 1 year ago by interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml to c/firefox@lemmy.ml

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Hi, Once in a while I try to clean up my tabs. First thing I do is use "merge all windows" to put all tabs into one window.

This often causes a memory clog and firefox get stuck in this state for 10-20 minutes

I have recorded one such instance.

I have tried using the "discard all tabs" addon, unfortunately, it is also getting frozen by the memory clog.

Sometimes I will just reboot my PC as that is faster.

Unfortunately, killing firefox this way, does not save the new tab order, so when I start firefox again, it will have 20+ windows open, which I again, merge all pages and then it clogs again !

So far the only solution I have found is just wait the 20 minutes.

Once the "memory clog" is passed, it runs just fine.

I would like better control over tab discard. and maybe some way of limitting bloat. For instance, I would rather keep a lower number of undiscarded youtube that as they seem to be insanely bloated.

In other cases, for most website I would like to never discard the contents.

In my ideal world, I would like the tabs to get frozen and saved to disk permanently, rather than assuming discard tabs can be reloaded. As if the websites were going to exist forever and discarding a tab is like cleaning a cache.

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[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The issue is parsing all that. There is no way you can keep that many tabs readily accessible like tabs are meant to be. Which is why these addons were born and are not official parts of Firefox. This is one of those just because you can doesn't mean you should situations. I get they've adopted this workflow, but reading through this it sounds more like daily driving than actual work. Which makes this even more bizarre, you can't read them all, they have to reload when you open them after a while (ie download again) so all points are moot. You aren't saving the page, you are holding onto a shell that will request the page again when you wake it up. If the server went offline never to be seen again your tab will not hold the information.

With this workflow, it might be better to have a crawler dump everything into folder hierarchies that are content searchable, and then search that like google using specialized software. I dont see any other reason you could even have 1k tabs open efficiently, you aren't searching through that, might as well google again and follow the purple links.

[–] tyler@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah I think that everyone here is latching onto the workflow part of this, when I don't think that's the problem here at all. OP mentioned that they search these, etc. but the real problem is the merging of windows, correct? So why can't these windows merge properly? Well it's probably the extension sucks (because I can drag hundreds of tabs around in sidebery just fine) or that they have disabled swap mem.

I understand everyone is freaking out about the workflow, but this is the reverse of the XY problem, like what happens on SO. Everyone tells them they're doing it wrong rather than just telling them how to do what they're trying to do. If OP had said "I have 2gb of ram and I have 30 tabs open in different windows and I use this extension to merge them and FF freezes" no one would be batting an eye about helping them.