1306105 - When I open the bookmarks menu, Firefox freezes (beachball) for 30 seconds or longer.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1383758

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[Rob]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.11; rv:49.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/49.0
Build ID: 20160916101415

Steps to reproduce:

1. Have 4000 bookmarks
2. Open Bookmarks menu
3. Behold Firefox freezing for 30+ seconds before favicons / favicon placeholders appear.


Actual results:

Firefox has suddenly started freezing for extended periods of time when accessing the bookmarks menu. I have 3,950 bookmarks in total but this problem did not start until I hit about 3,900.

I tried deleting the second half of my bookmarks, suspecting that a specific bookmark was causing the issue, but problem persisted. I have also deleted the first half and problem is still an issue. Once I deleted my bookmarks down to about 500 the issue almost went away (beachball persists but only for a few seconds). The length of time the freeze persists is linearly proportional to how many bookmarks I have (eg, 1000 bookmarks = ~10 second freeze, 2000 = 20 seconds, etc.). I have deleted all of my cached favicons from my bookmarks and problem still persists.

Since the problem was onset suddenly and deleting separate chunks of my bookmarks to rule out individually corrupt bookmarks has not remedied this issue, I suspect that this is a problem related to an update, at the very latest with version 48+

Even when deleting my bookmarks down to only 1000 the problem still persists, even though I never had any issues with 3000+ bookmarks until very recently. Even after Firefox freezes for 30 seconds, even if I re-open the bookmarks menu again immediately after, it still freezes all over again.

I am not experiencing any freezing when navigating the bookmarks via "Show all Bookmarks" (bookmarks library).

I am running OS X 10.11.6 on a Macbook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015).

Comment 1

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

do you have all of those bookmarks in the menu itself?
Our popup views are slow when they have to show lots of bookmarks. moving bookmarks into folders should help.

Comment 2

[theholysyrup]

I am experiencing the same thing. No bookmarks in the bookmarks menu itself, just folders containing them. Some bookmarks in the toolbar (2-3 dozen).

It was working fine until I reinstalled Windows 10 a couple days ago and then imported my bookmarks profile. The bookmarks have synced to my work machine, where the delay/temp-freezing-up behavior does not occur.

Both machines are running Windows 10 Enterprise Version and Firefox 49.0.2.

Comment 3

[Rob]

I have moved most bookmarks out of the menu itself and into subfolders. It still freezes just not for as long, and freezes for a long period when opening subfolders. Again, this wasn't an issue that started small and got worse over time as I accrued more and more bookmarks, it just started one day.

Comment 4

[theholysyrup]

I was able to fix the issue.

First I exported my existing bookmarks via Bookmarks menu > Show All Bookmarks (Ctrl+Shift+B) > Import and Backup > Backup. This created a .JSON file.

I also exported them a second time via Bookmarks menu > Show All Bookmarks > Import and Backup > Export Bookmarks to HTML, which created an .HTML file.

I then deleted everything from the existing bookmarks folders, in Firefox, including the Bookmarks Toolbar, and closed the browser.

I restarted Firefox, and imported the bookmarks backup via Bookmarks menu > Show All Bookmarks > Import and Backup > Restore. This imported them from the .JSON file. The slowdown/freeze-up issue persisted.

I deleted them all again, closed Firefox, restarted, and imported the bookmarks backup via Bookmarks menu > Show All Bookmarks > Import and Backup > Import Bookmarks from HTML. This imported them from the .HTML file. The slowdown/freeze-up issue was gone. Things worked normally.

I have noticed that a .JSON export includes the bookmarks in the Bookmarks Toolbar folder, but that an .HTML export does not. I do not know the reason for this, nor do I know why the .JSON import didn't fix the issue but the .HTML import did.

Comment 5

[Richard]

same problem here, over 10,000 bookmarks but the issue didn't exist prior to v49, so slow it's unusable

Comment 6

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

(In reply to Richard from comment #5)
> same problem here, over 10,000 bookmarks but the issue didn't exist prior to
> v49, so slow it's unusable

It would be useful to get a regression range, so we can find which patch could have made this worse.
https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2016/10/11/found-a-regression-in-firefox-give-us-details-with-mozregression/

Comment 7

[Richard]

(In reply to Marco Bonardo [::mak] from comment #6)
> (In reply to Richard from comment #5)
> > same problem here, over 10,000 bookmarks but the issue didn't exist prior to
> > v49, so slow it's unusable
> 
> It would be useful to get a regression range, so we can find which patch
> could have made this worse.
> https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2016/10/11/found-a-regression-in-firefox-
> give-us-details-with-mozregression/

I'm sorry but as an end-user I would not feel comfortable attempting to use that tool. I would add that I tried a Refresh Firefox last week but that did not resolve the issue.

Comment 8

[theholysyrup]

I have since encountered this issue on another machine, and fixed via the same method I described above.

Comment 9

[laurens]

Same problem (beach-balling for 10-20s when accessing Bookmarks menu item). Have <1000 bookmarks. Maybe related to favicon loading? I recently refreshed profile - no difference.

Comment 10

[laurens]

52.0.1 (64-bit)
OS X 10.12.3
Same problem - less than 1000 bookmarks. Recent refresh. Select Bookmarks from pulldown menu, Firefox freezes for 15s.