Follow Me on Twitter!

We knew that Firefox has problem with the memory usage. Sometimes it can reach to hundreds of megabytes. But here is a tricks on how to reduce the memory usage when you minimize your Firefox.

  1. Type about:config in Firefox address bar and press Enter.
  2. Right click in the page and select New > Boolean.
  3. Type config.trim_on_minimize in the box that pops up. Press Enter.
  4. Select True and then press Enter.
  5. Restart Firefox.

What it will do is, when each time you minimize your Firefox, the memory usage will dramatically drop down to 10Mb (this is what happen on my PC) but then it will slowly increase up to 50Mb. When you maximize it back, it will stay on 50Mb or maybe 70Mb.

Note: This is only to reduce the Firefox memory usage when you minimize it. Not to fix them. :)

r9studio.com [via Azmie.net][tags]firefox, tricks, memory, software[/tags]

Post to Twitter Post to Delicious Post to Digg Post to Facebook Post to StumbleUpon

Subscribe me feed! If you enjoyed this article, get latest updates via RSS feed or by email.

20 Responses to “Reduce Firefox Memory Usage when Minimize”

  1. Ah Pek
    November 20th, 2006 | 8:46 am | Reply

    Thanks! I think I’ll give it a shot!

  2. CypherHackz
    November 20th, 2006 | 10:40 am | Reply

    ok. tell me if it works or not. :)

  3. Ragnar
    November 20th, 2006 | 3:51 pm | Reply

    It worked like a charm! It went from 40 MB when freshly started down to 712 k and then rose up to 30 MB again when restored!

    Quite the handy trick there, now to see if there are any sideeffects…

  4. CypherHackz
    November 20th, 2006 | 6:20 pm | Reply

    yea. i wonder what will be the side effects. but so far, it doesn’t give any problems to my comp. :)

  5. Spinner
    November 23rd, 2006 | 2:51 pm | Reply

    :d
    HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY!!!

    Works well. The first time I minimized it it dropped from about 45mb down to 18.
    After maximizing it and re-minimizing it dropped to 4mb.
    Thanks!

  6. CypherHackz
    November 25th, 2006 | 12:46 am | Reply

    good to hear that it works on your comp man… :)

  7. Fahad Fateh
    November 25th, 2006 | 9:29 am | Reply

    Very useful specially with the Minimize to tray add-on. \:d/

  8. Matt
    November 28th, 2006 | 3:02 pm | Reply

    Doesn’t work for me. I’m on Firefox 2.0, and on Vista. I had two friends try it, too. One on Vista, one on XP. It didn’t work for either of them.

    :-w

  9. CypherHackz
    November 28th, 2006 | 5:49 pm | Reply

    [Comment ID #15215 Will Be Quoted Here]

    i will try the add-on later. thanks for sharing. :)

    [Comment ID #15280 Will Be Quoted Here]

    it should works. did you follow exactly the instructions given? :)

  10. Matt
    November 29th, 2006 | 3:36 am | Reply

    [Comment ID #15284 Will Be Quoted Here]

    Yes, I followed the instructions exactly, and closed FireFox afterwards. After re-opening it, its memory usage is the exact same, be it open or minimized.

  11. CypherHackz
    November 29th, 2006 | 2:40 pm | Reply

    i don’t know what could be wrong. it works fine on my comp. btw how about on your friend’s comp? still not working?

  12. Matt
    December 2nd, 2006 | 3:37 pm | Reply

    Hmm, as it would seem, the XP friend was just a tad bit stupid and did it wrong. :-”

    I had another Vista friend try it, doesn’t work for him either. So, I guess Vista is incompat. Oh well.

  13. Ben H
    December 26th, 2006 | 1:36 am | Reply
  14. Cameron
    January 15th, 2007 | 10:39 pm | Reply

    I tried it on Vista Ultimate 64 and it doesn’t work for me either. Guess it is incompatible.

  15. Robert Springer
    November 13th, 2007 | 4:34 am | Reply

    Nope still uses 250 mb of memory

Leave a Reply