Firefox Extensions: How To Get Your RAM Back

Posted by Jared Hislop Categories: Internet, Mods / Hacks, Software

Most people who browse the internet have discovered that Internet Explorer is not the best tool for the job.  This is where Firefox comes in; Firefox is one of the most popular alternatives to Internet Explorer.  Extensions are snippets of code that add extra features to the browser, but some of these modifications eat up your RAM.  A fix for this has been discovered, and it does a pretty good job resolving the issue.  This is not a permanent fix for the memory leak issue, but it will keep your Firefox extensions from consuming all of your PC’s memory.  Basically this fix will move Firefox from memory to your PC’s hard drive when you minimize Firefox, thus freeing up memory for other applications: 

1. Open Firefox and go to the Address Bar. Type in about:config and then press Enter
2. Right Click in the page and select New -> Boolean
3. In the box that pops up enter config.trim_on_minimize and press Enter
4. Now select True and then press Enter
5. Restart Firefox

Before applying this fix, my install of Firefox was eating almost 150MB of memory - even when minimized.  After I applied this fix, Firefox uses around 55MB of memory, and only 11MB when minimized.  Some people might say that moving Firefox to the hard drive will make Firefox take longer to maximize, but this is not the case.  I did not notice any adverse performance after I applied this fix.  Hopefully the next version of Firefox will address and resolve this issue, but in the mean time this should do. 

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