r/firefox • u/According_Mud_5187 • 15h ago

Solved How resource-intensive is Firefox's built-in translation?

I usually use TWP (Translate Web Pages) to translate websites, but I've been curious about Firefox's built-in translation feature and how much of a load it puts on a PC. I'm not really concerned about translation quality here. I'm more interested in the performance side of things, since Firefox's translation runs locally.

For example, what if I want to browse Reddit with pages translated all the time? Does the translation feature use a noticeable amount of CPU or RAM, or is it fairly lightweight once the language model is downloaded?

English isn't my first language, so translation tools are a big help when browsing the web. I'd love to hear from people who use Firefox's built-in translation regularly, especially if you've noticed any impact on performance compared to using an extension like TWP.

What's been your experience with it?

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4

u/alala2010he 15h ago

I'm not entirely sure, but I can guess that once it's translated something it doesn't use any more CPU than normal. Only during translation CPU usage goes up a bit, but translation of a new page usually finishes in a second or two

1

u/According_Mud_5187 15h ago

Thanks! I just like to be mindful of how much strain I put on my PC, so this is really helpful. I’ll keep it in mind!

3

u/Sinomsinom 11h ago

Similar to chrome's translation, it doesn't actuall translate the whole page at once.

It starts with only translating blocks of text which are actually visible, and then slowly starts translating the rest of the page, with it prioritising whatever you scroll to.  So it is possible that the translation process itself sometimes takes longer than you think it does and isn't finished when you might thing it does. This also means it might be using resources for longer than you think it would. In general it isn't that resource intensive though.

2

u/zakry0t 13h ago

The translation quality is worse than what you get with remote services. That said, I'm using a very old laptop and the translation is a bit slow with a CPU spike for 2 or 3 seconds. It's nothing too annoying. You could download the languages you're most interested in so they're ready for when you find a page in that language, otherwise you'd have to wait for the language to download the first time you use it. Check the Firefox preferences.

1

u/According_Mud_5187 13h ago

Thanks for sharing your experience! I'd like to be as gentle on my PC as possible, so this is really helpful. I'll check the Firefox preferences and download the languages I'm most likely to need in advance. Thanks again!

2

u/Forsaken_Ad6018 11h ago

For Reddit, a useful comparison would be to watch Firefox’s CPU and RAM usage with each translator separately, both during the initial translation and while scrolling through newly loaded comments. That should help distinguish a brief translation spike from ongoing resource use rather than relying on how responsive the first page feels.