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Autorefresh on Android (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 9 months ago by Aopen@discuss.tchncs.de to c/firefox@lemmy.ml
  1. Open any website
  2. Switch to another app and do literally anything
  3. Go back to Firefox
  4. Tab reloads for ~5s and wipes all form data

Poco F3 6GB
MIUI 14.0.9
Fennec 121.1
Battery saver: No restrictions
"media.aboutwebrtc.auto_refresh" - False

I doubt ram is an issue as there is always at least 1.7GB free. This bug has been occuring or a long time. 3 years old reddit post about it

Can I fix it myself or should I wait for it to get patched? I dont know if this is appropriate place to post this, but I cant use github

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[-] Midnitte@beehaw.org 11 points 9 months ago

It might actually be an issue with the OEMs version of Android and it's RAM management.

Not sure if there's a way to adjust it, but you could try using LineageOS?

[-] Undearius@lemmy.ca 7 points 9 months ago

I do not experience this on a Pixel 6a running stock android 14

[-] Midnitte@beehaw.org 3 points 9 months ago

Indeed, I do not experience it on my Samsung S22 Ultra, and I remember reading some article about how certain OEMs will change how Android manages RAM to try and improve the "experience" which results in weird behavior such as this.

[-] critical@reddthat.com 4 points 9 months ago

There is an event when the app is not in focus and they can save their data to avoid it being deleted or the webpage reloaded. Like a snapshot of the page.

[-] robber@lemmy.ml 3 points 9 months ago

I also experience this on LOS, but on an FP3 so RAM could be an issue on my end.

[-] Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world 11 points 9 months ago

IIRC MIUI has for quite a while been tuned very aggressively in terms of memory management. That is to say, it's probably not the browser but the underlying OS that is pruning processes to keep memory free when it really doesn't need to.

[-] henrikx@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 9 months ago

This ended up becoming a big issue with my OP7Pro where it would very aggressively kill apps causing them to constantly need to reload which would cost a lot of battery. My Pixel 7 does none of that and Firefox works great.

[-] lemann@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 9 months ago

Do you have the same issue after rebooting your device?

Android's memory management may be struggling with a lot of cached resources in RAM that are being used frequently, besides Fennec. (Cached resources' memory space may show up as "available", but in reality this space is in use - run cat /proc/meminfo in a command line on your Android to see how much RAM is "free")

When this happens, Android pretty much sends memory warnings to apps as soon as they are moved to the background, forcing them to save the bare minimum data needed to resume, before they are killed by the runtime. Fennec in this case is just saving your active tabs, but not the form data within. This behavior cannot be changed

Only fix in this scenario is to reboot your device AFAIK

[-] heehaw@lemmy.ml 3 points 9 months ago

I had some issue with miui. There is nothing we can do.

[-] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 9 months ago

As far as I know it's an issue with Firefox, always been like this.

Unfortunately your best bet is using a different browser on android.

[-] ako946659663@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago

My workaround on this is to split screen firefox and the app I need to open (ex. password manager).

[-] Frederic@beehaw.org 0 points 9 months ago

I also have a PoCo F3 on MIUI, FF sucks like you said, but the worst is that sometimes it drains battery. Even if I force close it, there is a background task eating the battery.

For instance my phone is at 80% at 10PM, I go to bed, at 6AM it is at 40%, battery status says that 40% of the battery was taken by FF during the night.

[-] BM_Bourguignon@mastodon.social 2 points 9 months ago

@Frederic
I do have a rather old Sony Xperia 1 II and Firefox don't use that much battery. See the screen (I'm using this browser a lot) :

@Aopen @firefox

[-] Drinvictus@discuss.tchncs.de -2 points 9 months ago

Firefox for Android straight up sucks. Sorry but it's true. It's heavy and slow with a bad ui. It basically has one and only one benefit. Add-ons. That's it. It's even worse on tablets. It's basically the same app but bigger. I bet Android users make up most of Firefox mobile users but they can't make a proper app.

[-] jackcole@mstdn.social 1 points 9 months ago

@Drinvictus @Aopen #Firefox on iOS is great, but Apple limits extensions that you can use on MacOS

[-] Drinvictus@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Hey it's my first time interacting with a mastodon user on Lemmy. Wonders of the fediverse. If you live in the EU it's about to get better because they won't be held back by webkit anymore. Unfortunately only in the EU. So now they'll have to make two apps for iOS.

Edit: I forgot to add. Every web browser on iOS is basically just a skin on top of webkit because Apple doesn't allow it.

this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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