Firefox is the web browser of choice of millions of people around the world whether it is installed on the desktop computers, notebook computers or the mobile devices. The main reason of Firefox’s popularity is the strict security standards they adhere to at Mozilla – making Firefox one of the most secure web browsers in the world today. While the Firefox browser excels in terms of security, it might not be greatest browser when it comes to managing the system resources – according to the experience of many Firefox users. People still complain about Firefox taking up too many system resources – it either hogs the CPU power or it claims a large piece of the total available RAM.
But most of these system resources problems could be attributed to badly behaving add-ons that you have installed in the Firefox browser. Some web pages are also designed to be heavily loaded with scripts and media so much that they could slow down the whole web browser. Fortunately, starting with version 47.0 of Firefox, you can see how these add-ons and open tabs are affecting the performance of Firefox browser. Not only that, you can also disable the offending add-ons and the web pages that seem to demand a lot from your system.
In order to check the current Firefox performance, you can type about:performance in the address bar and press Enter. It will list all the currently active add-ons and open tabs that could be consuming a large piece from the system resources. Firefox even tells you which of these could be slowing down your Firefox browser.
To know more about any of these listed add-ons or the open tabs, you can click on the More located next to them. It will display many details about the tab or the add-on including the CPU usage, system usage, framerate impact and so on. If you see any of the tabs that are slowing down your Firefox, then you can simply click on the Close Tab to close them. For system hogging add-ons, you can click on the Disable button to disable those add-ons.
Conclusion: By using the new feature to see how the various extensions and opened tabs are affected the performance of the Firefox web browser, you can actually avoid slowing down add-ons and web sites to improve the overall Firefox performance.