The weird thing to me whenever anyone complains how much memory a browser takes up, is what do they think the free RAM is doing otherwise? It's free so why can't an application use it? And that's what browsers do, taking the memory to use as a cache, and releasing it back to the system if available memory dips below some threshold.
Also, modern OSes are designed to fill as much of your RAM as possible. Windows does it, Android does it; pretty sure Linux and MacOS does too. The number you're looking at only shows the RAM usage by currently running processes. Unused RAM is wasted RAM, so your OS will fill as much of it as possible with prefetched data so that your machine will be more responsive when you actually need to use the data that was stored in advance for you.
Um, isn't only the addressable area reserved for the respective application? In other words, it doesn't even mean that the application fully utilizes the memory, but that the memory is continuously available for the application.
I switched back to Firefox over a year ago and I have not noticed it using much less RAM than Chrome tbh. It's definitely the better browser for all the other reasons, but I wouldn't list memory utilization as a big advantage over other browsers
The whole RAM thing is way overblown. Both browsers request a lot of RAM allocation, but only actually use a fraction of it. When the OS needs it for another process this "allocated, but unused" pool is the first to get used when "Free and unallocated" is gone
Problem is windows reports it all as the same in the task manager so people see that "70%" usage and freak out.
There’s also the idea that free RAM is somehow a good thing. In an ideal system, the RAM would always be “full” of potentially useful data. Having a bunch of empty RAM means that it’s not being useful. That space could be used to hold plenty of regularly used files that would be instantly loaded instead of having to pull from the drive again.
I don’t know when everyone started getting concerned with RAM usage, but in a perfect system, it would hold onto all of your frequently used programs and files that it could fit from boot and then those would load instantly.
Some Linux distros even allow loading the entire OS into RAM for wild speeds.
Idle RAM is just that. It does you no favors. Now, I do understand that you don’t want to be completely out, but we act like having 80% free is a goal for some reason.
Most browsers these days have issues with high RAM usage, and memory leaks to. I'd recommend trying to limit the RAM of the browser, it stops it from eating up so much.
Here's how I did it on linux. I'm sure there's a way to do it if you're on Windows though (might not be as good though).
This is a script to limit Firefox to 8 gigabytes of RAM, you may change it lower or higher depending on what your needs are by changing the number from 8 to whatever else you'd like. Fair warning though setting it too low will cause Firefox to lag very badly, and will crash chromium browsers outright (Ask me how I found out).
Since their profile picture is Komi Shouko from "Komi can't communicate", who is sometimes canonically portrayed with cat ears they are either joking or rejecting their true inner self.
I work in tech, and I don't understand people's obsession with having all their RAM free at all times.
If you don't use it, why do you have it?
Windows (not the best OS, but the one I know the most about), will lie to you about how much memory you have that's free. It puts data in RAM as cache. In the event you need that data, it's already loaded in RAM. Usually this is stuff like DLLs and executables for programs.
There's a difference between "free" memory, and "available" memory.
In addition, RAM is always going down in price, so 32G today costs what 16G did, some number of years ago. The same can be said for 16G vs 8G, etc. Though, the comparison becomes less relevant as you get into much smaller and older memory types, since the cost per dimm will only ever go so low.
Buy the memory, use as much of it as you can, as often as you can. Go wild with it. Enjoy.
There’s a difference between “free” memory, and “available” memory.
I agree with this, and I'm sure most people complaining about Firefox or Chrome's abhorrent memory usage would too. The problem with most browsers is that they eat up the available memory and often do not give it back. So you end up with situations where you're running low on available RAM even though you have 32GB installed.
Buy the memory, use as much of it as you can, as often as you can. Go wild with it. Enjoy.
Sure, if you release it when not using it, otherwise unlimited RAM privilege revoked. Memory leaks suck and when they chew up all your RAM and they continue to happen, offending apps should either be no longer used, or limited to their minimum necessary RAM requirements to limit the damage they'll do.
Hence why I capped Firefox at 8GB, anything more would be wasted when it inevitably leaks.
None of thaťs helpful. You know, when browser uses half your ram, teams quarter and rest of the programs the rest, windows is swapping on your SSD like a prick and you cannot switch windows - none of what you said helps. And of course, the RAM is soldered on and cannot be expanded.
This is also why I don't buy systems with soldered RAM. It's a horrible trend in computer systems that RAM is soldered. It's a lazy way to fix a problem and nobody should buy a system like that.
The industry needs to come up with better solutions.
Browsers have a really hard time with the last part. Hence why I recommended limiting it to something more manageable, that way it doesn't chew up everything available.
For me there are programs that "can acceptably use that much RAM" and those that it's "unacceptable", to me.
what's 20% to 40% of my gaming rig's resources may be uncomfortably taxing and laggy for my laptop.
Its okay to waste resources on my gaming rig but the laptop needs all it can get. I accept some software will not reasonably run on the laptop.
My employer has stuck me on 10yo hardware before, running windows 10 pro + intrusive expensive antivirus and nobody is around to question why their computers are getting 5-15fps and locking up for a minute or two when you open chrome. It becomes normal.
Any software is the host and/or backbone for other running software should focus on reducing it's own resource usage for the sake of its children.
I work in tech, and I don’t understand people’s obsession with having all their RAM free at all times.
If you don’t use it, why do you have it?
Windows (not the best OS, but the one I know the most about), will lie to you about how much memory you have that’s free. It puts data in RAM as cache. In the event you need that data, it’s already loaded in RAM. Usually this is stuff like DLLs and executables for programs.
There’s a difference between “free” memory, and “available” memory.
Linux and macOS do the same, although I wouldn't call it lying per se :)
There is certainly a lack of understanding of the difference between free and available RAM. TLDR: yes, free RAM is indeed wasted RAM.
If you actually have a lot of free RAM, it's probably because you either booted or freed a lot of RAM very recently. After using your computer for a while, most of your available RAM should not be free but rather being used for page cache and other caches.
After a program has just read and/or written more data from disk than will fit in available RAM, the kernel's page cache (which is typically the bulk of that not-free-but-available memory) should be mostly populated by the most recent of those operations. This means that if that program (or any other program) reads those files again, before they are evicted from cache by other things, they will not need to wait for the disk and will get them back much faster.
However, managing all of this is the kernel's job, and the not-free-but-available RAM being used for page cache is not (in any OS, as far as I know, though I mostly know Linux) attributed to the program(s) responsible for putting things there.
So, when people are complaining about an application using 40% of their RAM it is not necessarily due to them misunderstanding free-vs-available RAM. The used number for an application does not include the portion of the system's not-free-but-available RAM which the application is also responsible for occupying.
(If you want to know which programs and/or which files are responsible for occupying your page cache... on Linux at least, it is not really possible without instrumenting your kernel. The kernel is just tracking blocks. There several tools which will let you see which blocks of a given file are cached, but there isn't a reverse mapping from blocks to files.)
I got tired of cleaning them out so I stopped. Now I have an emotional attachment to my 200+ tabs on Firefox mobile 🥹
I have so many the counter turned to infinity lol
counterpoint: why does it need to keep the tabs in ram? either just discard the data and only keep the url, or if it would otherwise double check whether you want to close a tab then save things to disk cache after 5 minutes..
I honestly dont care about my browser using a lot of resources (processes, RAM, etc) because it may be helpful to the isolation security model of the browser. Each and every website is a possible malicious app.
What is the acceptable amount of ram a browser should be using? Is there a way of knowing how much is “wasted”? Is it even possible to waste ram, like what is wasted, time? Electricity?
It's only a problem if it doesn't give it up when other apps need it and there's not enough. Browsers just cache a bunch of shit in memory for speed and convenience, but they should unallocate it back to the pool if something else calls for it. The internet complaining about this for years and years are mostly doing so from a place of ignorance.
The issue is that browsers don't release much memory back to the system when it's needed. I wish they'd work more like the Linux kernel's VFS caching later, but they don't (and might not be able to. For example, I do don't think the Linux kernel has good APIs for such a use case).
The issue is that browsers don't release much memory back to the system when it's needed. I wish they'd work more like the Linux kernel's VFS caching later, but they don't (and might not be able to. For example, I do don't think the Linux kernel has good APIs for such a use case).
Even if it doesn't eat that much if it latches on to a portion of Memory and won't give it up unless killed that's still bad, and would be considered wasted as nothing else can use it for anything.
Somehow I don't really agree with that theory when Firefox was chomping down on 31.5GB of RAM and causing other things to crash or slow down (crashed Gnome shell a few times which was fun), as well as crashing often itself.
When I limited the RAM to 8GB using the method outlined in my other comments all the mentioned issues went away. It would run smoothly, and old tabs would just unload, something which didn't happen before. And most of all, everything else ran smoothly without issues or hiccups.
Moral of the story, when apps leak RAM, limit their RAM. RAM held by apps and not being released is just as wasted as if it wasn't used at all, because chances are it isn't being used at all, and isn't able to be used.
If an app allocates it and ever uses it and refuses to give it up unless killed that can be considered wasted. It's called a memory leak and they can be really bad, especially when they consume a lot of memory, as that memory might as well be empty but is being held hostage by other apps.
If they released RAM then whatever amount they were using wouldn't be wasted and if more is needed they'd simply release it to free up resources. That hasn't been happening though, and most modern Browsers are notorious for consuming massive quantities without releasing it back to the pool.
In that case with the presence of Memory leaks being considered, and the fact that they continue to not be fixed, the acceptable amount of RAM a browser should be using (should even have access to) is the minimum necessary to run smoothly. From my testing with Firefox that seems to be 8GB. 4GB caused many websites to struggle.
Such an arrangement ensures that even if a Browser begins eating RAM it won't eat up all the RAM and cause issues, worst that'll happen is that it itself will crash from eating all the 8GB it was allowed to access.
Considering that the vast majority of the modern ads are videos or images, they won't show up in such text-browser environments. Also, they depend on JavaScript, which isn't available through such text-browser environments.
I've been using the Firefox extension "Auto Tab Discard", which helps a lot with RAM usage. I like multi-tab-browsing and IME browsers just don't free up RAM when other applications need them.
I tried that but I found that its effects on long term memory leakage weren't adequate for me, and it still consumed way too much RAM. Which is why I just decided to limit RAM for Firefox. It achieves a similar effect as the browser unloads tabs when it runs low on memory, it just doesn't wait until it's using 31GB of RAM and instead just uses up to 8GB (which is what I capped it at) before unloading tabs.
I mostly use Firefox when I use a browser (App-using zoomer) but I actually might swap to something Chromium based at some point? My only reason for it is the resentment I'm building up for Firefox while writing Playwright tests at work. It takes like twice as long as chrome and keeps flaking due to random timeouts ughh