Almost everyone wants to surf fast. But that only works if the browser plays along in addition to a fast network connection. If you find Firefox is slow, there are easy ways to find and release brakes. CHIP shows how to make Firefox faster again.
Firefox is the last browser bastion fighting against a complete monoculture of Chromium-based browsers. The Chrome competition is considered to be faster, which we were able to measure in part in the last browser test. Still, Firefox isn’t actually slow – at least it shouldn’t be. If you still have the feeling that Firefox is slow on your system, there are a few tricks you can use to speed up the browser again.
But before you start, an update check is worthwhile. After all, Mozilla releases a new Firefox version every four weeks and despite the auto-update, you can sometimes miss one or the other. It is important that you use the latest version. In the menu under “Help” click on “About Firefox” and display the installed version. If there is an update, you just have to restart the browser and the rest will be done automatically.
Windows reboot is good for Firefox
Any support hotline would advise you to restart your browser and then Windows and then see if any problems have gone away. The tip isn’t that bad, especially because many users today don’t regularly close and restart Windows or Firefox. You don’t have to do this every time, but every now and then you can use it to eliminate errors and if they don’t appear again, it’s a quick solution to the problem.
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Use Firefox without extensions
The next construction site in the Firefox check are extensions. It may happen that one or more extensions are slowing down the browser. In the Firefox address bar, type “about:support”. There you will learn many details about the system and get access to practical tuning tools:
- Analyzing problems: Click on “Troubleshooting Mode” to restart Firefox. Extensions, themes and settings you have customized are temporarily deactivated. So this is a kind of safe mode for Firefox. If Firefox is then faster again, you know that an extension is slowing you down.
- Accelerate startup: Click “Clear startup cache” if Firefox takes longer than usual to start.
- Firefox Reset: With “Clean Firefox” you can reset the browser. Extensions and changed settings are removed, but bookmarks and passwords remain.
Find RAM hogs
Firefox has its own task manager built in that lets you know how much resources each tab and extension is using. If an extension is the cause of Firefox problems, increased energy or RAM consumption could indicate this. You can access the task manager under “about:performance”.
You can then specifically disable or remove the extensions in question. There is also an interesting switch under “about:memory”. In the “Free memory” area, you can free up memory by clicking on “Minimize memory usage”.
If you always have too many tabs open, you can also use the Auto Tab Discard tool to reduce RAM consumption and make Firefox run faster again.
Clear cookies and cache
If websites are sluggish, it sometimes helps to delete the cache and cookies. You do this via the menu and the “Chronicle” entry. Click on “Clear recent history”, select “Everything” at the top, tick “Cookies” and “Cache” and confirm with “Ok”. Note that the default setting also logs you out of logged-in sessions, such as Facebook or your web mail provider.
Reset Firefox
One way that resolves most issues is resetting Firefox. This option can also be found under “about:support”. To do this, click on “Clean up Firefox” and confirm the security prompt by clicking on “Clean up Firefox” a second time. This step removes add-ons and customizations and resets browser settings to default values.
Create a new Firefox profile
The Firefox reset described above is actually a pretty rough trowel, but there are problems that don’t go away with it. This is especially true for intolerances related to your Firefox profile. In these cases you can create an additional profile without legacy issues.
To do this, visit “about:profiles” and click on “Create a new profile”. An assistant helps with the creation. After a restart you will have a new default profile for Firefox. You can also use this page to change the default profile or delete profiles that you no longer need.
Remove Malware
It is unpleasant when malware has nested in the browser. A virus scanner on the system and the protection integrated in Firefox should prevent this, but it can happen that the start page is distorted and the search is redirected to another search engine and you are overwhelmed by prize draw notifications. In these cases, we recommend a cleaning tool like AdwCleaner, which can specifically remove browser hijackers.