this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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Firefox

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I'm not talking about an extra 10-15sec, but easily 2-3 full minutes (I've sat here with a timer checking) to load pages, sometimes not loading them at all. Particularly with login pages, but even just homepages.

Dropbox, Cloudflare, Various companies forums, My bank, Google; each of these sites and more I've had firefox either not load at all, or take so long I've been able to copy the link into Chrome, do what I need there, then come back to Firefox still 'loading' a blank white page.

I just don't understand. I want to migrate away from Chrome and use Firefox, but it's been unusably slow when it even loads anything at all.

P.S. In the time I've taken to write this (~5min) plus the time to decide to post and find this community firefox has still not loaded my cloudflare dash... (typed in the address, waited a while, gave up and came here but left it open)

/edit: I should note I have ublock installed, but I get the same results with it disabled most of the time.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Nope, it's very snappy for me. I use both Firefox and Mull on Android with ublock.

Clear cache/app data and try again?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

Mine has always been super snappy, so something's definately off I'd say.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (6 children)

For me it's the dark reader extension. Which slows down loading a lot. Try turning it off and compare.

There a lot of discussion about it online

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Strange, I have dark reader but no issues with loading times.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Also for me. Makes everything very laggy.

Should come with a warning as you don't immediately notice it right away, but then in the following weeks you compare the loading speed of Vivaldi (that has a similar built-in function) and Firefox and you will notice the lag

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

yeah that addon hits hard

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Thanks, I have the same problem and I'll try removing dark reader

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Dark reader is not the only reason, but it is also a major one. It is a performance hog even on desktop

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

I recently switched to Firefox even on mobile and I didn't notice any slowness

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Who waits 2 min for a page to load. Sounds like aweful browsing experience. If it doesnt load in 10 sec, I wouldnt wait more. Clear catch, cookies, wipe everything if nothing else helps

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

I use vanilla Firefox, no extension but Dark Reader, for me it’s always close to, or as fast as Chrome

On Pixel 7

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wonder whether this could have anything to do with DNS lookups working different in Chrome. Assuming Chrome on mobile directly goes to google DNS too.

Or maybe FF also getting IPv6 records for your affected targets and there being some slow or bad connection there.

But personally I don't have much experience debugging such things on Android.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Seconding the idea that it sounds likely to be a DNS thing. Android Firefox is apparently capable of DNS over HTTP, but it's not immediately clear to me how to turn it off to see if that's the problem, unless you have access to about:config.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Try installing Mull (Firefox fork) from F-Droid and see if you have the same issues

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

the about:blank pages sucks

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Try disabling all add ons. I'm using firefox on all my devices, some of them pretty old mobiles and all work good. Some extensions like already mentioned dark reader are absolute perf killers.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I get this problem too! But I never thought it was Firefox. That could definitely be the culprit but like others said it's probably interfering apps or cookies or other data

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Same here, got even the same setup on am Pixel 6 pro. It's so unbelievably slow for me.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have experienced Firefox take a long time to load (a minute or more) the first page after it has been suspended or not used in a while. For instance, if I am in my chat app (weechat-android) and I click a link to open it in Firefox, it may take a minute or more to load. However, after that initial load, it is mostly OK and behaves normally.

It's annoying and sucks... but I can live with it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I have the same problem and the only reason I haven't dumped mobile Firefox yet is a working adblock.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I don't have this issue, it does seem to take a couple of seconds more, but not the minutes you are talking about. This even on a slower Exynos 9611.

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

Which version do you have installed? Up until 112 or so, I would've agreed that it's much slower but not anymore. If something loads more than 10 seconds, there's something really wrong with the server or internet speed.

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

I have a really crappy old phone, and Firefox plus ublock plus privacy badger still works great for me. However, I had to uninstall it and reinstall it when I first set up that phone, for reasons I never could figure out.

Annoyingly, after an OTA, same deal. Had to reinstall Firefox or it was garbage.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I just recently started using Firefox on a rather old samsung, have never had any issues like this.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Try other browsers or even Firefox nightly and see if you get the same performance, If so it’s not browser related

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

Yes, it feels sluggish and sometimes loads pages forever. No idea why, everything else works fine. Oh and the firefox notifications block interaction which is solidly insane

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Mine is faster than chrome, less than 3 seconds every time

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Once in a while I hit a tab that takes way too long to load. Closing the tab and opening a new one is what fixes that.

But other than that... I have 100 Firefox tabs open.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Do you have multiple tabs open or other apps running in the background? If so close them all and retest.

Try restarting your phone and see if that improves the issue as well. That phone has 4GB of memory most likely which can hinder multitasking.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I have been experiencing that with the new Firefox ever since it was released, despite having less tabs open (0-4 instead of a few dozen) and using less addons (this is not a deliberate choice)

But, for me loading of websites never hang indefinitely, it is just extremely slow