Creative Cloud font loading causes very long hang
Categories
(Core :: Graphics: Text, defect)
Tracking
()
People
(Reporter: raymieX, Unassigned)
Details
Steps to reproduce:
For years, every time Adobe Creative Cloud is loading its font library — on startup or sometimes when that app reboots — Firefox hangs for hours. I have many, many fonts enabled through CC. This can take hours or more to resolve. This has occurred with various versions on Mac. It happens to no other app on my system, so something about Firefox loading the font list presumably causes this. macOS 15.6.1, though it has happened on prior releases of macOS.
Actual results:
Firefox hangs for hours.
Expected results:
Firefox does not freeze.
|
||
Comment 1•8 months ago
|
||
The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Core::Graphics: Text' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.
|
||
Comment 2•8 months ago
|
||
Can you upload a profile using https://profiler.firefox.com/ ?
|
Reporter | |
Comment 3•8 months ago
|
||
https://share.firefox.dev/4oN9Rsi
It's not happening right this moment, but this should give you some configuration information.
|
|
||
Comment 4•8 months ago
|
||
Configuration information is mostly via upload about:support.
For profiles we really want to see the problem being reproduced.
|
|
Reporter | |
Comment 5•8 months ago
|
||
(In reply to Timothy Nikkel (:tnikkel) from comment #4)
Configuration information is mostly via upload about:support.
For profiles we really want to see the problem being reproduced.
It's hard to demonstrate as Firefox hangs and is totally unresponsive when it happens. I also can't control exactly when it happens.
|
||
Comment 6•8 months ago
|
||
Triage: This seems pretty severe when it happens, but it's unclear how often it happens. I don't have an intuition for the root cause here, but based on info I see here, it seems to be a small-to-tiny fraction of the time (not that that comforts anybody when it does happen).
My guess is that we have resource contention happening somewhere that takes a long time to resolve. Even just knowing which process and thread this hang is happening in would be very helpful.
Raymie, when this reproduces, are you able to do things like press shortcuts, etc. to change the state of Firefox, and see it after the hang ends? I'm wondering if handling of the entire tab is stuck on something, the entire browser, or if it's just the graphical output.
I'm also not familiar with Adobe Creative Cloud's font library, or using it from the web. When you say "loading its font library", are you referring to https://fonts.adobe.com/? It would be very helpful if we could get even more concrete steps in your STR for what URL to navigate to, what controls to click, etc.
I'm going to tentatively classify this as S2, and escalate to the graphics triage meta bug. This will make the bug come up in the graphics team's triage on Thursday. If we can determine that this doesn't happen widely enough to qualify as an S2, then great. Otherwise, maybe putting heads together can give some insight into what's going on here.
NI'ng :lsalzman in the meantime, since he's the triage owner.
|
|
Reporter | |
Comment 8•8 months ago
|
||
(In reply to Erich Gubler [:ErichDonGubler] (he/him) from comment #6)
Triage: This seems pretty severe when it happens, but it's unclear how often it happens. I don't have an intuition for the root cause here, but based on info I see here, it seems to be a small-to-tiny fraction of the time (not that that comforts anybody when it does happen).
My guess is that we have resource contention happening somewhere that takes a long time to resolve. Even just knowing which process and thread this hang is happening in would be very helpful.
Raymie, when this reproduces, are you able to do things like press shortcuts, etc. to change the state of Firefox, and see it after the hang ends? I'm wondering if handling of the entire tab is stuck on something, the entire browser, or if it's just the graphical output.
I'm also not familiar with Adobe Creative Cloud's font library, or using it from the web. When you say "loading its font library", are you referring to https://fonts.adobe.com/? It would be very helpful if we could get even more concrete steps in your STR for what URL to navigate to, what controls to click, etc.
I'm going to tentatively classify this as S2, and escalate to the graphics triage meta bug. This will make the bug come up in the graphics team's triage on Thursday. If we can determine that this doesn't happen widely enough to qualify as an S2, then great. Otherwise, maybe putting heads together can give some insight into what's going on here.
NI'ng :lsalzman in the meantime, since he's the triage owner.
Pressing shortcuts doesn't work. There is some sort of storage of information, as in the past I've clicked on links in other apps and Firefox has loaded them after it stops hanging. I seem to recall I had music playing at one point when one of these hangs occurred and it kept playing.
You are correct. Adobe Fonts (part of Adobe Creative Cloud) is a cloud-synced font library. It is when that app reboots or reinitializes its library that Firefox hangs. It's happened sometimes on system startup, but even an update to the app can occasionally cause it. In fact, the last time it happened I was just using the browser normally and it hung. I have a lot of fonts synced that way, which seems to be part of the story. There's nowhere I go specifically in Firefox that triggers this.
|
||
Comment 9•8 months ago
|
||
I'm guessing that when Adobe Fonts updates its collection of enabled/installed fonts in any way, this causes a Windows notification that leads to us reinitializing the font list in Firefox. That wouldn't be much of a problem in itself, but there are probably factors that are greatly increasing the impact.
I wonder if we get a separate notification for each individual font that Adobe is activating, and so end up rebuilding the font list many, many times if there are a lot of enabled fonts.
I also wonder if the reporter perhaps has some kind of antivirus or similar software that is intercepting all our font accesses to scan them in some way, and this is causing the font-list rebuild to take much longer than normal.
|
|
Reporter | |
Comment 10•8 months ago
|
||
(In reply to Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame] from comment #9)
I'm guessing that when Adobe Fonts updates its collection of enabled/installed fonts in any way, this causes a Windows notification that leads to us reinitializing the font list in Firefox. That wouldn't be much of a problem in itself, but there are probably factors that are greatly increasing the impact.
I wonder if we get a separate notification for each individual font that Adobe is activating, and so end up rebuilding the font list many, many times if there are a lot of enabled fonts.
I also wonder if the reporter perhaps has some kind of antivirus or similar software that is intercepting all our font accesses to scan them in some way, and this is causing the font-list rebuild to take much longer than normal.
I have macOS, not Windows. The only antivirus of any kind I have right now is Malwarebytes.
|
|
Reporter | |
Comment 11•8 months ago
|
||
So I uninstalled and reinstalled Creative Cloud to fix an unrelated problem (it had suddenly become a massive battery hog!), I force quit while Firefox hung (indicating again some sort of interaction with the font list...), and now it's giving me a solid gray screen. Elements are still rendering underneath, though, which is strange. Tooltips appear on hover, but everything else is just blank.
|
|
Reporter | |
Comment 12•8 months ago
|
||
The issue in comment #11 ended up being some sort of corrupted profile, so I now have a new Firefox profile in place. Who knows, this might fix things. But it may take time to see if that is true.
|
|
||
Comment 13•8 months ago
|
||
(In reply to Raymie Humbert from comment #10)
(In reply to Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame] from comment #9)
I'm guessing that when Adobe Fonts updates its collection of enabled/installed fonts in any way, this causes a Windows notification that leads to us reinitializing the font list in Firefox. ....
I have macOS, not Windows. The only antivirus of any kind I have right now is Malwarebytes.
Ah, sorry, I misremembered which system was involved. The possible underlying issues are similar in either case, though: on macOS, we also get notifications from the OS when a font is added (or removed), and if that's happening separately for every individual font that CC enables, I can imagine it could add up to an awful lot of processing.
|
|
Reporter | |
Comment 14•8 months ago
|
||
Just checking in to note that the new profile did not change anything and it hung when my computer restarted this morning. I notice fontd spikes in CPU usage at the same time, so clearly whatever process is in use is also sending messages to the system.
|
||
Comment 15•8 months ago
•
|
||
Now that we have a theory that it's connected to Adobe Cloud fonts, do you think you might be able to start the Firefox profiler, cause the problem, and then stop the profiler?
The reason we're so keen on getting a profile is that it's very likely to help us understand what in the world Firefox is doing while it's hung. From here, since we can't reproduce the problem ourselves, we can only guess, and that's got a poor track record.
Obviously, if it's not possible, then it's not possible. Just wanted to make sure.
|
||
Updated•7 months ago
|
|
||
Updated•7 months ago
|
|
|
Reporter | |
Comment 16•5 months ago
|
||
My apologies for the delay. I had a brief hang today when I logged out and logged back into CC, but before doing it I thought to run the profiler:
|
|
Reporter | |
Comment 17•5 months ago
|
||
I am sharing a second instance of this that I was able to capture when I had some further CC issues:
Description
•