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Comment by rkangel | Hacker News Reader

What is the actual performance story these days? Last time I tried Firefox (soon after they were making a fuss about Quantum) I was fairly disappointed. I'm including performance of the Android browser here (because they work in concert as far as I'm concerned).

Also, what pain am I going to hit with DRM and online video? I use the usual suspects - Amazon, Netflix, Youtube.

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Performance has gotten a lot better since the initial quantum release. All of your DRM'd streaming services will be fine although some of the more archaic ones may still require you to install flash, but Firefox uses the same DRM video decoder as Chrome.

Given the multiple conflicting anecdotal experiences you'll find in the comment section of any story about Firefox or Chrome, performance of either browser is all over the place and seems to depend on your hardware, OS, drivers, extensions, how you use the browser and probably the phase of the moon.

FF is fast on the desktop but still very slow on android. Im not sure what the difference is, but Ive switched to using a chrome fork on android and FFon my desktop and am pretty pleased.

Why do you say they work in concert?

I'd guess he wants to be able to sync bookmarks/passwords/etc across platforms. It's nice being able to find something on my phone and then pull it up later on my desktop using synced bookmarks or Firefox's "send tab to device" functionality.

I will say when I first started using Firefox on mobile it did seem slower, but the ability to use extensions like ublock has always made up for it. I think speed has gotten a bit better lately, but there's still room for improvement there.

The current build of Firefox for Android is being sunsetted soon, last noon security update is going to be in July. The version they are moving to, Firefox fenix is very fast. At the moment I don't think it has sync enabled (so no sign in) but the future looks good there.

Is Fenix the same as Firefox Focus?

Different, but focus is using the same engine that fenix does.

Nice maybe Ill go back for Android. I couldnt figure out why it was so slow, its seemed almost like a DNS issue because the first page load, even if it was local, took 10+ seconds. Im a huge FF fan and supporter, I'd like to go back.

> Why do you say they work in concert?

Because I want my saved passwords, bookmarks and recent tabs shared between the two.

Agreed. I was utterly disappointed with performance on OSX after the big talk about Quantum. I had tons of situations with the whole browser freezing, videos not playing - mainly related to media.

I've been disappointed with Firefox on MacOS. I tried it for months, but it constantly crashed on me, especially when using multiple monitors, and was super laggy and jittery compared to what I was used to.

I gave up and went back to Chrome, which has been as performant as ever.

I think you mean you're disappointed with Firefox on macOS?

If so, my experience has been the same, though I have been sticking with it for now.

I often find I have to close out Firefox and restore my session to stop it from churning so hard my fans spin. This is particularly true after it has been running for a while or after resuming from suspend.

Sorry yes, corrected that typo.

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