Firefox 57 CPU usage is insane

This is a sad rant :(

I love Firefox (and Mozilla too) and have never switched to Chrome (Although I use Chrome for development.) But few days ago I switched to Opera, because new Firefox's (aka Quantum) CPU usage is insane.

Firefox :(

Disabling extensions didn't help, it just hogs all available resources. MacOS is giving me "Service Battery" warning when Firefox is running. And battery last about four times(!) shorter.

So I checked my options, and decided to go with Opera. One of my favorite features in Firefox, tabs on the side, is not supported in Chrome and Safari, so only decent browser left was Opera.

Opera has Tree Tabs extension, which is not as good as Tree Style Tab but it is good enough. I'm getting used to it, and so far so good. Although I do hope Firefox will resolve CPU issues.

If they haven't hyped it so much, I probably wouldn't be writing this. But they raised my expectations, how much faster and better it is, how they finally caught up... and it is bad, like really bad. I've tried both beta and developer editions some time ago, and fans were going crazy, CPU usage was going through the roof, battery drainage... But I hoped that it will get resolved before they release a stable version.

I'm really sad, but if they don't fix this I won't be switching back to Firefox. Still, I'm going to continue supporting and donating to Mozilla. On the plus side, MDN is one of the best sites for web development resources.

Update 02. Decemeber 2017

It seems that guys from Mozilla are aware of it and that they are trying to fix it. Hooray!

Update 04. December 2018

Unfortunately, even today with version 63.0.3 issue doesn't seem to be resolved. I'm sticking with Opera, but I switched to Simple Vertical Tabs extension.

Update 26. September 2019

It is fixed!

Comments (3)

Dean
01. Dec 2017, 03:20

That's a real shame. I'm currently having a really positive experience with v57 on Windows, so maybe this is a Mac only issue?

For me, this is the first time in a while that I've been happy to use FireFox.

Stanko
01. Dec 2017, 09:35

Hey, I'm really bummed about it as well. Not sure what it is, I've read that people are having the same issue on both Windows and Mac. Maybe it is a combination of both hardware and software.

Hopefully, 58 will bring a solution for it.

Cheers!

Arun
19. Jul 2018, 05:25

I am experiencing the same both in ver 57 and 61.