One of the biggest “improvements” that Mozilla claims are the Firefox memory usage, in particular, the vanquishing of memory leaks. Although Firefox memory usage improved a little over the last few years, it still uses a lot of memory; a little more than I feel comfortable with. And for this reason, we created Firemin.

Programs on my computer can stay open and run for days or even weeks, and Firefox is no exception. Because of this Firefox was using over 3 GB of memory after a few days. It’s quite normal for Firefox to be sucking up over 250 MB of memory right off the bat. In a memory leak, you’ll see the memory usage keep increasing the longer the program is open/in-use and this is exactly what happens with Firefox.

What is Firemin?

Simply put, Firemin will attempt to eliminate Firefox memory leaks and decrease the amount of memory Firefox uses. All I did was tweak our Memory Booster a little and applied it to Firefox and this solved the memory leak issues.

Firemin vs. Windows Memory Management

Windows will also periodically scan running processes and tell them to release their unused memory. You could argue that this makes Firemin unnecessary, and you would be spot on. However, It is my opinion that Windows does not clean out memory as often as I would like it to. Firemin runs the clean memory API call a few times per second.

The method Firemin uses to decrease Firefox memory usage is not proven and the debate over if it works or not will go on until the end of time, but the logic remains; if it works for you, use it and if it does not, don’t use it. It is really that simple.

Download Firemin

Firemin comes in two flavors. A setup utility for installing Firemin to your computer and a portable version for running it straight from a memory stick or portable hard drive. The portable version will not write any settings to the registry or leave any traces on your computer.

I came to our attention that all of the language files in build 5069 is corrupt. We apologize for the trouble and request that you download the fixed Build 5082.

Download Firemin_5082_Setup.exe (1458512 downloads) Portable Firemin_5082.zip (260202 downloads) Version 6.2.3.5082 Updated September 1, 2020 File Size 3 MB License Open Source Requirements Windows® 7, 8 / 8.1, 10 (32 and 64 bit) Malware Scan

Other Builds

Recent Firemin 6.2.3.5082 Changes

Fixed: GUIOnEventMode and TrayOnEventMode options had unnecessary slow downs.

Fixed: Workarounds added to alleviate slow downs on Windows 10 1809 and later (OS bug/design change).

Fixed: About page Memory usage par display.

Updated support URL on the About page.

Improved Resolute Compatibility.

Updated Japanese Translation.

Resources

Firemin uses the exceptional Firefox 2005 icons by Jairo Boudewyn (weboso).

Firefox 2005 Icons by Jairo Boudewyn

Source Code

Download the Firemin source code from the GitHub Repository. To compile (build) the sources, you will need to download and install AutoIt Beta version 3.3.15.0 or later. Download the AutoIt Script Editor (Scite) here to edit the source code.