Skip Navigation

Firefox is unbelievably slow when I'm watching youtube videos

I have about 25 extensions (almost all needed) and firefox lags like crazy, it's like I'm watching the videos at 10 fps. I download chrome to test it out and sure enough it runs as smooth as butter. Any help?

EDIT: It somehow fixed itself after I started using LibreWolf (with the same addons)

33 comments
  • I'd start by disabling all add-ons and check if that helps. If not, there's something wrong with Firefox itself.

    If disabling them fixed the issue, I'd continue with a binary search to see if there's a specific addon causing issues. I.e. enable only half the add-ons and re-check. Then continue enabling/disabling add-ons until you know which addon causes the issue.

    That said, it could be the combined load, or a combination of add-ons, which is significantly harder to fix.

  • @Yoru system specs? What add-ons are installed? What video res, 720, 1080, 4k?

    • recently upgraded to an rx 6600 on a ryzen 5 5600 also 16 gigs of mem. here are the addons:

      the video res is 1080p

      • Note that Dark Reader is insanely resource intensive.

        (Also note that Disconnect has been unmaintained since before the pandemic and is redundant because UO exists.)

      • @Yoru Try clicking the gear in the menu bar, and turning off Ambient Mode. That lagged the crap out of my machine, but on a Intel iGPU.

        The dark themes in Enhancer for Youtube also disable ambient mode.

  • As they said start disabling every add-on. If this doesn't solve it, it may be an issue with hardware acceleration. I remember some installations where Firefox wouldn't decode video on the graphics card by default. Do a duckduckgo 'hardware acceleration \ Firefox' and see if it works.

    Edit: Also codecs, maybe something with the h265 codecs

33 comments