Firefox Suddenly Incredibly Slow for Google Searches

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Firefox has become so slow for searches recently it’s become almost unusable. Is anyone else experiencing this? Firefox has been my default browser for years. The same situation does not exist with Brave or Edge.

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No issues on 3 PCs: personal desktop running Mint, family member’s notebook running Win10 22H2, and my work notebook running Win10 22H2. Firefox is my default even on my work PC.

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In the URL bar, type: about:config and hit Enter. Agree to accept the risk if you see it (I usually disable that) and then type: network trr.mode If the current mode is 5, change it to 2 (the Edit button is on the right).

Close the about:config configuration page and then run a search.

If it doesn’t help you can try using a different DNS server. To do that go to the FF Settings page and click Privacy & Security in the left hand menu.  Scroll down to “Enable secure DNS using” and enable the Increased Protection option. In the blue box where it reads “Choose Provider” select “Custom” and then copy/paste the following: https://doh.mullvad.net/dns-query

Mullvad is a Swedish VPN, but they make their DNS server available for free. More info on the subject at https://mullvad.net/en/help/dns-over-https-and-dns-over-tls Close the Firefox settings page and then test it to see if there is any improvement.

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UPDATE

I noticed this morning that Mullvad has deprecated the custom DNS server I suggested. So please use the following one instead: [https://base.dns.mullvad.net/dns-query].

To check to make sure it’s working properly go to Browserleaks and click “IP Address” in the left hand menu and then run the DNS Leak Test.

You can also use Mullvad’s check site at https://mullvad.net/en/check

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I noticed that browsing is slower when I use DNS over HTTPs in Firefox Privacy and Security. It speeds up when I use another DNS, and then slows down again.

But browsing is faster when I just set the DNS in the router.

I went to

https://browserleaks.com/ip

and ran the DNS test leak, and it shows the the DNS server that I put in the router.

 

 

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Update: the problem isn’t using DNS over HTTPs in Firefox but the DNS provider. Sometimes it’s fast and sometimes it’s not. I have to switch to another provider from time to time.

 

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I had this slow DNS problem too in Firefox 129.0.1 (64-bit). (Btw, Chrome and Edge do not have this problem so this was definitely a Firefox issue.)  In my case, my local/home server was taking a long while before pages would come up.  I found the DNS problem with the Extension “Load Time” which showed me Domain Lookups were all taking 21 seconds.  Changing the following setting fixed it for me:

Privacy & Security > Enable DNS over HTTPS using = Off

This is perfectly fine as this is my home computer and the DNS server is my Router.

I’m so glad I stumbled on this page.  It led me to a fix.  I almost went down the rabbit hole of resetting Preferences and uninstalling/reinstalling Firefox.  Whew!

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Charlie Kong wrote:

I found the DNS problem with the Extension “Load Time” which showed me Domain Lookups were all taking 21 seconds. Changing the following setting fixed it for me: Privacy & Security > Enable DNS over HTTPS using = Off

I’ve had that setting “ON” ever since it was available and, even on 129.0.1, have yet to experience a DNS lookup slowdown, or have pages take forever to be looked up.

Seems as if this is something that’s affecting some folks but not others. If you have the same problem, and are running Firefox 129.0.1, try shutting DoH off, per the instructions above, and see if that helps. If it does, hopefully enough folks will have the same problem so that Mozilla will institute a fix in the next release, such as in version 129.0.2 if they decide to go that route.

Mozilla recently made a change related to DoH in version 129.0. Here’s the section of the release notes for 129.0 where they talk about it:

HTTPS DNS records can now be resolved with the operating system’s DNS resolver on specific platforms (Windows 11, Linux, Android 10+). Previously this required DNS over HTTPS to be enabled. This capability allows the use of HTTP/3 without needing to use the Alt-Svc header, upgrades requests to HTTPS when the DNS record is present, and enables wider use of ECH.

Here’s the link to the 129 release notes for those interested:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/129.0/releasenotes/

I suppose it’s possible that change might be what’s behind the slowness of the DNS lookups experienced by Charlie Kong in the post above.

I’m using Windows 10 22H2, so just maybe that’s why I haven’t experienced this problem. The missive above plainly includes Windows 11 as one of the specific platforms where the new behavior could very well be experienced.

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You might be interested in https://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm

This is a DNS provider speed tester by Steve Gibson.

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Steve, TechTango

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Me, too; a couple of weeks ago, out of a clear blue sky, my previously speedy searches (on W10/22H2/Firefox/Duck Duck Go/Roboform, all up-to-date) began to crawl. The Firefox folks are finger pointing at Roboform, which is saying “NotMe”.

With all of the above entities running, slowly, Task Manager shows as many as 22 instances of Firefox running. That uses up essentially all of my memory, which would certainly cause my pc to run s-lo-w-l-y. I usually delete the Ffx tasks and w-a-i-t for my system to come back to life.

At this point, I’m looking for an answer to this question: does Ffx treat desktop shortcuts as if they are tabs?

Any insight will be eternally appreciated…

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I had the same, I had been having one or two additional problems with Google. For me, I discovered that Firefox was not the problem, I dumped Google for DuckDuckGo and the problem went.

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