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Mozilla keeps autorefreshing whenever I switch tabs

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Hey, my Mozilla - currently Firefox 67 - keeps on auto refreshing tabs whenever I change tabs. The "accessibility.blockautorefresh" status is still shown as "defeault" and value is still set to "true."

Is this part of the update? Or is it some mistake.

Hey, my Mozilla - currently Firefox 67 - keeps on auto refreshing tabs whenever I change tabs. The "accessibility.blockautorefresh" status is still shown as "defeault" and value is still set to "true." Is this part of the update? Or is it some mistake.

Chosen solution

I believe that you are probably referring to Firefox's new feature that unload tabs if it's running low on memory. This is designed to be a performance enhancement, since there's no point in keeping tabs that haven't been accessed in a while open and eating up your computer's resources. The feature is only supposed to trigger when your computer is low on memory, in which case you don't really have a lot to spare.

There appears to be a way to disable this feature. Simply do the following:

  1. Type about:config in your Firefox address bar to open the Configuration Editor.
  2. Bypass the warning (we'll be careful, I promise).
  3. Find the browser.tabs.unloadOnLowMemory preference.
  4. Double click it to change the value to false.
  5. Restart Firefox.

Hope this helps.

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All Replies (9)

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Hi,

How much free memory do you have?

This looks a bit like Firefox is suspending the other tabs due to low memory. When it wakes them up, it then needs to reload them.

It will start suspending tabs when there's less than 400MB memory remaining. See here for some more information:

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/05/21/latest-firefox-release-is-faster-than-ever/

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Chosen Solution

I believe that you are probably referring to Firefox's new feature that unload tabs if it's running low on memory. This is designed to be a performance enhancement, since there's no point in keeping tabs that haven't been accessed in a while open and eating up your computer's resources. The feature is only supposed to trigger when your computer is low on memory, in which case you don't really have a lot to spare.

There appears to be a way to disable this feature. Simply do the following:

  1. Type about:config in your Firefox address bar to open the Configuration Editor.
  2. Bypass the warning (we'll be careful, I promise).
  3. Find the browser.tabs.unloadOnLowMemory preference.
  4. Double click it to change the value to false.
  5. Restart Firefox.

Hope this helps.

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How do I find the free memory thing?

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Note that this feature is only triggered when you are low on available memory (about 400 MB). If you would disable it then you might be more sensitive to OOM (out-of-memory) crashes where Firefox isn't able to allocate memory.

You can look at the about:memory page and the about:performance page (Task Manager).

Modified by cor-el

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Thank you.

How should I get more free memory? Is there a way of deleting any of them to make more memory?

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"Memory" is referring to RAM, which are the physical cards installed in your laptop or desktop computer.

You can update those RAM cards and/or add additional ones in some cases to increase the available memory.

Other than that, you can decrease how much memory your computer uses by limiting how many programs (especially background ones) are running and using your computer's resources.

There are plenty of online tutorials that will explain how to make your computer run faster. Just use extreme caution when downloading any software claiming to clean or tune your PC, because there are many malicious programs out there.

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I guess getting more memory requires cleaning the disk?

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No, you are thinking of storage. Your computer has RAM and a Hard Drive, both of which are called "memory", which causes a lot of confusion. In this particular situation, "memory"is referring to the RAM, not the Hard Drive (disk).

This website has a very good, basic explanation of the difference between the two types of storage.

Primarily, to free up "memory" in the context of this thread, you want to either upgrade the RAM chips in your computer or cut the number of programs running.

For example, when you start your computer, some programs open automatically. For example, a common one that opens automatically on some computers is Skype, a video chatting service. Every program that opens uses a portion of your RAM to operate. The more programs that are open, the less free RAM you have.

It's also important to note that "programs" are not necessarily stuff that you can see is running. For example, Windows has a lot of "services", which are essentially programs. At any given time, your computer may be running hundreds of programs in the background.

Hope this gives you a clearer picture of what "memory" is referring to.

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Thank you, sir. I will keep that in mind.

Again, thanks.