Firefox extremely slow

[mubs]

Maybe an update did it, but for the past few weeks FF has been extremely slow. Takes minutes to load a web page. Chrome does it in under a second. I uninstalled and re-installed but that didn't help; though it did say it is preserving my settings, bookmarks etc. I don't remember seeing an option to obliterate everything and start over.

I use FF for SF, YT and a few other web sites, and Chrome for everything else. Chrome doesn't seem to be good at remembering cookies when defined as an exception, like SF, so I don't have to login again & again. That's because both browsers are set to clear all cookies and cache on browser exit, except of course the exceptions.

 

[Mercutio]

Look under Settings --> Privacy & Security --> DNS over HTTPS. Try turning that on or off to see if that makes a difference.

 

[Mercutio]

As an aside, Firefox and Brave are the only two mainstream browsers with ongoing support for thorough ad blocking. I've found no combination of settings on Chromium derived browsers like Chrome or Edge that actually work to provide the same level of safety.

Of course I can put an ad blocking appliance in place on site and that's definitely a good option for desktop systems but I still want the blockers to work on systems that move between networks.

 

[mubs]

Look under Settings --> Privacy & Security --> DNS over HTTPS. Try turning that on or off to see if that makes a difference.

Didn't make any difference, Merc. About 15 seconds to load SF. If I come back to SF from another website, it loads in a couple of seconds. Don't know if this is a clue. Same behavior with all other websites.

 

[mubs]

32 secs to load ARS Technica. It spends most of the time "Looking up ARS Technica....

Chrome loads ARS in under 1 sec. Same PC.

 

[Mercutio]

This does not align with my experiences with Firefox. Even on something deeply pathetic like a 4th gen i3 with 4GB RAM, Firefox and Chrome are subjectively similar with Chrome being maybe a hair faster generally (with the caveat that it also isn't blocking as much, either).

What if you try doing it in a fresh profile for either Firefox or your user account? Maybe there's an accumulation of cruft going on somewhere?

 

[mubs]

This started happening recently. I'll try a complete uninstall of FF and full re-install.

For DNS over HTTPS, I even set it to Off, made no difference. Any time it needs to look up is when it chokes.

For info, CPU is a Ryzen 9 5900x 12 core, 64GB of RAM.