Bitwarden crashing Firefox?

[bituser]

Firefox 149.02, Microsoft Windows 10 Professional (x64) Build 19045.7058 (22H2)

This has been happening regularly for a long time. This is with my main profile. I have another profile that doesn’t seem to have a problem.

The pattern is it seems to appear after extended periods of use, or extended periods of being open, but idle.

Sometimes it just freezes. If I wait long enough, it could be 2-10 minutes, it may go back to normal. Sometimes It will crash my system. If I can’t get to the task manager to end task, I usuall resort to rebooting the OS manually with the power button on the device.

Or, more often, it occurs when I attempt to close the browser, and either the freeze will occur, or the responses to my mouse or keyboard are severely delayed, In that scenario, it may eventually close.

After that type of episode, it will usually not launch for an an an extended length of time, due to the following.

That is only a fraction of the 40-50 “Firefox” entries there to be revealed by scrolling. In order to relaunch, I must manually “End Task” on 2-3 of them before I can relaunch.

Since it happens randomly, and I cannot create it the situation, about:support does not help.

I have crash reports, but I don’t how to start an analysis on the Mozilla Crash Stats - Firefox Crash Data webpage.

I believe a Firefox extension is responsible. I have several Firefox profiles. The problems only happen with one of them. Shortly after launching the problem browser, the memory usage changes from this

to this

I have another profile that is almost identical. The memory stays around 2000. The one main difference I can see is that the broken profile has the Bitwarden Password Manager installed. The good profile does not. I don’t believe any other extension is using the resources like Bitwarden.

Is there any way to determine if Bitwarden is cause the issues? I can publish the extension list if that will help.

[Neuron5569]

@bituser

memory

Hello,

I don’t know what the problem is, but some users reported excessive memory usage, possibly due to the BW extension, on Firefox for both Linux and Windows. The about:memory tab may tell you more.

Excess memory usage by Firefox extension

[OpSec]

I can report that BW Firefox extension 2026.3.0 from this month is running flawlessly on my Linux Mint 22.3. Smooth, fast, dependable. I am using a high end machine but I doubt that makes much of a difference.

[bituser]

I ran about:processes and about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox, but I don’t know what to do with the results. Can you guide me thru whatever I need to report back here

[Neuron5569]

OK — we’re trying to see whether the Bitwarden extension is using an excessive amount of memory (some people on GitHub reported over 1 GB).

When you look at about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox, you should look for this:

We need that number to identify Bitwarden extension.

When you look at about:memory, you should see this, click “Measure”:

Click “extension” on the right side:

You should see something like this, starting with:

We are looking for Bitwarden extension’s memory usage, using the number you got from above:

In my case, the unlocked extension seems to use memory normally, compared with other extensions that use even more.

Measure memory usage when the extension is unlocked (higher usage) and when it’s locked to see if that could be causing your problem.

P.S. OTOH, you can try uninstalling the extension, exiting the browser and making sure all Firefox processes close, then reinstalling the extension to see if the problem goes away on its own.

[dwbit]

Hey @bituser can you confirm if you’re on the latest Firefox version 2026.3.0?