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Firefox has better performance and RAM usage if you disable accessibility services! (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

9 comments fedilink hide all child comments

publicado de forma cruzada desde: https://lemmy.ml/post/78544

It's probably well known at this point, but it doesn't hurt to spread the word further. Disabling accessibility services in Firefox (both on desktop and mobile, but specially on mobile) helps A LOT with performance and RAM usage.

Just set accessibility.force_disabled to 1 in about:config and enjoy the up to 20% less RAM usage and 5% less CPU usage (at least in my not so detailed testing on my laptop).

In my case my system went from 7.9GB to 5.2GB with the same tabs and windows open and from 25% to 20% CPU usage while having one of those tabs playing a livestream.

Quoting one of the comments in the Reddit thread I found this out to why this isn't disabled by default:

Accessibility does not start by default, but it starts lazily if another piece of software on your device starts requesting accessibility features from Firefox.

Unfortunately a lot of third-party software likes to do this even though they have nothing to do with assistive technologies.

You can also vote on this bug in Bugzilla to help it get solved faster.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 years ago

Another reason to disable it:

Firefox Accessibility Service can be abused by malware, if present, to monitor user behavior or access user information on the web.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/accessibility-services

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 years ago

this takes me back to when there were many preferences you could disable to speed up firefox. like animation, initial paint delay, http network pipeline, and such.

I wonder if there's an updated list?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

PSA: I have cross-posted it in this community in case any of you stopped using Firefox because of its high RAM usage or poor performance. Maybe this solves your Firefox problem and maybe you will be able to use it again :)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 years ago (2 children)

Cool! Any idea if this would affect Firefox on mobile and more specifically Fenix browser?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 years ago (1 children)

This also affects Firefox for Android (Fenix). To enable it, you must go to about:config and change the value of accessibility.force_disabled from 0 (default value) to 1.

Note that this can only be modified in the beta and nightly branches, and as an exception, in Fennec F-Droid as well (it is a fork of the stable branch but with modifications).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 years ago (1 children)

Thanks for sharing have done to my Phone and Laptop now

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 years ago

You're welcome :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 years ago

Doesn't hurt to set the flag anyway, if you'll never need any current or future accessibility-related feature.