Starting from the version 33 of the Mozilla Firefox browser, the OpenH264 component is enabled by default. This OpenH264 library module is used basically for WebRTC interface (for real time communication for online telephony or P2P conversation across browsers). This is a great news if you use WebRTC based applications in your web browser as the OpenH264 is only going to improve the performance of WebRTC. But if you do not use any of these applications, then why keep the OpenH264 module enabled – it is only going to take up a little extra memory? If you want to disable or enable the OpenH264 module in Firefox, then you can follow these steps:
- Open a new tab in your Firefox browser.
- Type about:config in the address bar and press Enter. It will show a warranty warning, but you can click on the “I’ll be careful, I promise” button to proceed.
- Type openh264 in the search box to narrow down the configuration values displayed to the ones related only to the OpenH264 component.
- Double-click on the configuration named media.gmp-gmpopenh264.enabled to switch its value from true to false to disable it, or from false to true to enable it.
- Now you can check by typing about:plugins in the address bar and pressing Enter. If you see the OpenH264 module listed there as enabled, then it is enabled otherwise it is disabled.
Conclusion: The OpenH264 module is used for improvement in web chat and video performance but if you do not use these features as much, then you can easily disable the OpenH264 component in Firefox.