Firefox Mac Performance

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If you switch to OSX try to go with safari which cause less strain on your battery has same privacy as Firefox. Outside Mac you can use safari. I follow the same safari in apple devices and Firefox in non Mac devices. Web dev work in Mac you can use Firefox but browsing and day today safari is better. And yes while it is true that Firefox by default let’s you do less on the new tab page, you can still install extensions and customize that page on Firefox too. But the reason why Firefox is so far ahead Chrome and Edge in customization is userchrome.css That file let’s you change the look and feel of Firefox way more than just new skin on top.

  1. Firefox Mac Performance Tracker
  2. Firefox Mac Performance Issues
  3. Firefox Mac Download
  4. Firefox 70 Mac Performance

I just did a quick comparison for my personal use between these browsers and the only few things I considered were:

  1. Performance: How smoothly the window resizes and the browser updates the layout.
  2. Memory consumption.
  3. CPU power

Firefox Mac Performance Tracker

  • The latest version of all 6 browsers have been used
  • All of them have 3 tabs on the same websites open (AppStore, Microsoft, YouTube)
  • The comparison has been on MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2017)
  • It’s not a through test just enough for me to see which one suits me

Here is the results.

  • In terms of performance Safari, Opera and Firefox are the best. The other 3 are laggy when resizing
Firefox

Memory:

It’a hard to tell which one is more efficient immediately as they all have side processes running but seems like Opera consumes least memory and Firefox uses the most.

Tracking CPU is even harder than memory but Firefox is always on top consuming the most CPU time and Safari is the most efficient one. Edge, Chrome and Brave are pretty much the same.

Firefox Mac Performance Issues

Conclusion

The Winner on Mac is Safari but it’s not a cross platform browser. The next Winner in terms of performance is Opera and then Firefox. Chrome, Brave, and Edge failed the first test so they are not even considered as options.

Firefox Mac Download

Update 1:

I used Opera for a week and it has these cons:

  • It has issue with location and google map couldn’t show my location OK.
  • It doesn’t have a good support and not listed as the supported browser for some websites.
  • Due to the limited support for import and export, it’s hard to switch from other browsers to Opera or switching back to them.
  • It doesn’t allow sending feedback.
  • The settings page is not well organized and it’s not easy to find the settings you need.

So switching to Firefox now.

Firefox 70 Mac Performance

Update 2:

Firefox has some rendering issues with the android app. Have to tradeoff between Chrome’s performance issue on Mac while resizing and Firefox rendering issue on the phone.
The other issue Firefox has is, it sometimes doesn’t update the saved passwords (e.g. on Okta) but Chrome does.

Firefox

So switching back to Chrome.