How to Speed Up Firefox

Everyone hates a slow browser. That is, after all, were most people spend their time when on the computer. From browsing Facebook and reading email, to shopping and much more. That's why we need to optimize our computers and our browsers to ensure the optimal speed. After all, precious milliseconds add up over time.

Below, you will find various tips that have proven to be helpful to people who wish to speed up Firefox.

If you're leave your browser open for more than a few hours, you probably notice that its memory consumption can get insanely high. I suggest this Firefox Extension, BarTab, to help with memory issues. After a few hours of use, Firefox can consume a large amount of your available RAM if you let it. BarTab helps by allowing you to "unload" tabs (automatically if you configure it), saving any possible memory leaks in Firefox from creeping up over time.

If Firefox's memory usage ever gets too high, it will not only slow down your browser experience, but also force other vital programs and even parts of your operating system to the page file, which is incredibly slower than RAM. This can lead to terrible performance of your entire computer, and eventually lead to Firefox, other programs, and even Windows to crash.

How many of your extensions do you use every single day? Chances are, not all of them. One of the greatest ways to save memory in Firefox is to simply disable the stuff that you don't use.

In Firefox, click Tools then Addons. Go through the Extensions tab and disable or uninstall any addons that you don't use every single day. You may also find some extensions added by software on your computer that you don't ever use (like Adobe Contribute Toolbar). If you don't know what it is, the safe rule of thumb: Disable it.

Then head over to the Plugins tab. There are only a handful of things you'll probably want to leave unchecked here, Windows Media Player plugin, Mozilla Default Plug-in, O3D Plugin, Shockwave Flash, maybe Java (though you may want to disable it for security reasons), Google Talk, Google Update, etc. Again, if you don't use it every day or don't know what it is, just disable it. You'll probably be surprised at some of the stuff here that you don't ever use (like Microsoft Office junk, some Adobe junk, etc).

Check to see if you have any extensions installed that are on the Problematic Extensions list. If you do, follow any workarounds you come across. If there's no workaround, I highly suggest uninstalling it. You can also kindly ask the developer behind it to fix their extensions. If you are a developer, offer to help. If not, perhaps consider giving the author a donation to compensate them for their time and effort.

Not everyone is comfortable editing settings like this, and these sorts of settings don't always offer measurable speed boosts. However, if you're feeling adventurous, you can type in about:config into your address bar and set the following settings. (You can use the filter tool to help out a LOT. If a preference name doesn't exist, feel free to create it.)

I won't go into details explaining each one, however, the first 4 enable more aggressive pipelining so assets (in theory) download faster. The next 2 make the browser (in theory) render faster. The next one attempts to make the UI a bit more responsive. The last one tries to prevent the cache from getting crazy big (memory leak). Mileage can and will vary. If your performance gets worse, you can always right click and click Reset and the browser default will take over again.

Most changes will require you to restart Firefox.

Hopefully, these suggestions will help you speed up Firefox and, possibly, your computer. These suggestions are pretty common, but usually unorganized and not all together. I hope this will serve as an accurate and thorough resource for reliably making Firefox faster. If you have any suggestions or tips that I missed, let me know in the comments!