Firefox is building a tool to show which tabs are slowing you down

Firefox users who treat tabs like a collection hobby might finally get a break. Mozilla is working on a sidebar panel called Resource Monitor that shows exactly how much RAM and CPU each open tab is burning.

It groups everything by website and sorts the list so the biggest hogs sit at the top. From there, you can unload or close a single tab or an entire group without clicking through menus.

Tyler, the product manager for Firefox Performance, highlighted this upcoming tool on Mozilla Connect. “We’re building an interface that gives you more transparency and control over resource usage, especially as dozens (or even hundreds) of tabs accumulate,” he wrote. He even asked what people actually want when the browser starts crawling.

Since the post is still fresh, there aren’t many comments yet. But one commenter said, “Tab hoarders don’t like closing tabs.” Unloading clears the memory but leaves the tab sitting there, which is perfect if you’re the kind of person who keeps twenty half-read articles open for no good reason.

There are also asks for more advanced stuff like heatmaps of the worst offenders, network usage per tab, or a clear look at which extensions are the real problem. Tyler seemed open to a lot of it. He said preemptive control and resource limits are “a core part of what comes next, not a nice-to-have.”

Firefox has been moving on other fronts too. Native Containers finally made it into the browser, though Mozilla still tells power users to keep the extension for now because some features are missing. The Nova redesign is also rolling into Nightly, and longtime users remain pretty split on the whole thing.

This new panel is different from the existing about:processes page because it stays open in the sidebar. You can glance at it while you’re actually using the browser and deal with the problem right then instead of hunting for a hidden page.

The PM didn’t share any ETA for a public release. Much like other feature releases, it’ll first hit the Nightly channel. If you run those builds, keep an eye out.

Meanwhile, the latest stable version cleaned up a few crashes and some audio bugs. More details on that here.

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