What is Firefox on Mac?
By Junaid, maker of Taskglass · Last reviewed
Mozilla's web browser. Tabs run in separate child processes, often labelled plugin-container.
Firefox runs a main process (firefox) plus child processes for web content, graphics and utilities. On macOS these child processes often appear as 'plugin-container', and the graphics process can appear as 'Firefox GPU Helper'. Firefox's built-in about:processes page shows which tab or extension each process belongs to.
- Category
- Third-party
- Made by
- Mozilla
- Safe to quit:
- Yes
Shown in Activity Monitor as firefox, Firefox, plugin-container, Firefox GPU Helper
Why is Firefox using so much CPU or memory?
- Heavy tabs with video, animation or complex web apps
- Many tabs open
- Extensions running scripts
- A long-running session with lots of history
What to do
- 1Type about:processes in the address bar to find the heavy tab or extension
- 2Close or reload that tab
- 3Disable add-ons you don't use (about:addons)
- 4Quit and reopen Firefox
Safe to quit? Yes.
Safe to quit Firefox; quitting a single child process only affects the tabs it was running.
Related processes
Part of the Taskglass Process Library