r/firefox • u/Leakyboatlouie • 22h ago

💻 Help Any idea why Firefox keeps opening multiple processes?

It pretty much grinds my PC to a halt.

0 Upvotes

46% Upvoted

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21

u/reddanit | 22h ago

That's just how all modern browsers work by default. There is some additional overhead coming from this, but it's not massive at standard settings.

Realistically the source of your problem is probably somewhere else. Usually it's a weird custom config, misbehaving website, add-on or some combination of those. Do you see the same problem on a fresh profile?

3

u/Leakyboatlouie 21h ago

I haven't tried that, but I will. Thanks.

3

u/npc_housecat 21h ago

It's a security feature. Keeps the code from each tab isolated from each other

2

u/Tango1777 20h ago

That's a standard way to develop applications for many years now. Nothing that is specific to Firefox. And no, it doesn't make your PC run any worse than if it was a single process. You don't need to know the specifics, but if you are interested, ask AI why desktop apps architecture is done this way. It'll give you general idea.

2

u/120mmbarrage 20h ago

It's called sandboxing, everything has its own sandbox. The browser, the GPU renderer iirc, extensions, every tab, and a few other thing are all isolated. Basically for security and if one thing crashes, like a tab, it doesn't crash the whole browser and you lose everything you were doing.

1

u/bpmackow 16h ago

That way if one tab freezes/crashes it won't affect the whole browser.