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Comment by xboxnolifes | Hacker News Reader

Firefox has multiple, user-affecting, memory leaks related to Youtube (unconfirmed if just youtube), going back at least 7 years. Tab scrollbar as no option to be disabled, so I had to write CSS to get tabs into a form close to what I would like similar to chrome. Tab mute icon has no (working) option to disable the click event, so I had to write CSS to remove it.

I made some other changes, but I forget what. At least FF still has the full uBlock Origin.

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The average user does not notice any of these things.

Except the YouTube thing but that's because I'm not even sure what you're talking about: I leave YouTube windows open in Firefox for weeks.

I can confirm the youtube issue. No idea if it might be some edge case with my distro or hardware. Forcing a GC collection helps but input events to the entire browser still feel laggy until I restart it. It's been going on for years now.

It occurs to me that it could be a pathological edge case triggered by ublock and youtube interacting. I'm not going to disable it to find out.

Go to about:processes and kill the YouTube process. All YouTube tabs and embeds will be marked as crashed, with a button to reload them. The memory leak will be reset and you won't have to restart the whole browser.

I'm pretty sure the memory leak applies the longer you navigate the same youtube tab. If I browse a lot in one day it gets to the point of crashing if I don't open a new tab/window.

Bro you probably have a monster mac pro with 256gb unified ram. I'm typing this on a N100 minipc. We're not the same. I just tried to switch to firefox (with 3 tabs including HN and youtube) and my load topped out at 2.5. I'm back to chrome now with the same tabs (and a couple more) and it's hovering at 1.

I've been using an n100 as my daily driver for months with librewolf and it's fine. I tend to end up with dozens of tabs at least before I finally decide I'll never sort through them and close the window.

16gb of ram also? I think it's youtube more than anything else. I am having a lot of problems with youtube, my other machine is a netbook which crashes while listening/watching to videos on youtube. Not sure why we put all our content (software engineering, etc) on that platform. It's awful.

FWIW I've been experiencing memory leaks on web Youtube for a month or two even on Chrome, particularly with livestreams

Just bite the bullet and use Tree Style Tabs or Sideberry.

I didn't, for decades, but it was a mistake.

Firefox now has vertical tabs built in. Not as feature filled of course though tab groups and vertical tabs together replaces all the functionality I needed from Tree Style Tabs.

"memory leaks related to Youtube"

News to me.

If this is even true, in the end it's still "so what?" Meaning, the alternative is even worse so, let's say granted there is this problem. Where is the better alternative that does not have this problem? Chrome doesn't have other equivalent or worse memory problems? Even if not leaking, it simply uses so much it's the same end result.

I've never consciously noticed a problem with youtube so if there is a problem, it's not one that necessarily matters.

Chrome has never crashed on me from Youtube memory leaks. Firefox has.

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