How to reduce FireFox Memory Usage

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FireFox is always my favourite since I start to use it a few years back. But the problem with FireFox is it is hogging too much memory. FireFox also is known for the memory leak issue even though on FireFox 13 and even FireFox 14 beta (they said they fixed it but the truth is the truth). Even though I do nothing on FireFox, I can see the memory usage of FireFox keep on growing.

Personally I am not sure how FireFox will crash every now and then on my laptop, it could be Windows7 trying to kill it because it hogging too much memory. I am sure this could be the truth because if I close FireFox and leave Chrome on only, now it is time for Chrome to crash every now and then.

I searched through FireFox add-ons and found a few add-on that claimed to be able to reduce the memory usage of FireFox. I picked Memory Fox, which works as expected. The memory reduced, but not a lot (reduced 20MB, sigh). But I can feel that the FireFox sometimes will lag a bit, even with just typing on blogger.

pic credit: http://www.datum-forensics.com

Then it is like someone can read my mind. Raymond.cc posted Firemin on one of their post and I give it a try and seriously it works. FireFox on my laptop now will always not more than 20M of memory with 10 tabs opened. It might blow up to more than 50M, but FireMin will lower it down.


To download and understand more about this software, go to this link below:
http://www.datum-forensics.com/2012/05/firemin/

So how to use it?

1. Download it from the link showed above
2. Run Firemin.exe to extract it to the same dir where firemin.exe at
3. Look for Firemin folder, and execute (double click) Firemin.exe
4. Now you have to close FireFox before you can optimize it
5. After FireFox is closed, look for the Firemin icon at notification area
6. Right click on the Firemin icon and select Optimize FireFox
7. Wait for it to complete.
8. Now open FireFox and load up your 10 or 20 tabs and enjoy surfing. 

You can check the memory usage by open Windows Task Manager and look for firefox.exe under Processes tab.

Bear in mind that Firemin is not 100% working all the time. The FireFox eventually will need to be restart, but not as often compare to without Firemin.

Happy FireFox-ing. :)



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source: saw it first at http://www.raymond.cc/blog/reduce-firefox-memory-leaks-and-usage-with-firemin -> thanks HAL9000