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Comment by nonninz

5 months ago

I have this using Firefox on a 2019 Macbook Pro with 16GB RAM.

If the laptop has not been restarted for a while, Firefox tabs will eat up more and more memory over time until it makes the mac kind-of unresponsive (*) and will need to get hard power cycled.

The only signs that this is about to happen are two:

1. Any audio-emitting webapp will start to get very choppy, whether is youtube on FF, Google meet on chrome, or a slack call/huddle. Which is the problem I think you are referring to.

2. Switching workspaces animation will get very very choppy. Usually when this happens it's already almost too late.

(*) this means that while the pointer is still moving smoothily, even from a BT mouse, there is no reaction to any click or keyboard typing.

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nonninz

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BafS  5 months ago

I have the exact same issue, it starts to be choppy at random time and I have to reboot, usually in the middle of my work. I'm considering switching to another OS because of this single issue that has been there for years.

wkat4242  5 months ago

I see the same with firefox on my FreeBSD daily driver machine.

I thought it was because I pause the entire firefox process when the screen is locked. When it resumes it sometimes acts up (I use the STOP and CONT signals for this). But maybe it's just a FF bug.

I just restart it once every few days, my OS doesn't actually become unstable due to it. But i do have 64 GB of ram (one of the benefits to no longer being tied to apple's ecosystem is that memory upgrades and amazingly cheap)