Browser locks when downloading

[Sawday]

In the last few days whenever I download (in Firefox or Safari) a file the browser locks until the file is almost completely downloaded. I have rebooted and run Onyx. Any ideas how I can resolve this?

 

[DEyncourt]

Like you, I (sometimes) use Firefox and (most of the time) use Safari to download stuff but I have not experienced my browsers being locked up during downloads. That you are having this problem with 2 different browsers suggests that your problem is due to something external to those programs, so:

Browser extentions? If you try to use the same extensions on both browsers, then try disabling all of them on each browser to see if this downloading problem goes away, then re-enabling your extensions one at a time to find the problem extension(s). It may be that your problem is due to some recent update to one of your extensions, or that it may be due to a combination of extensions.

Drive space on your boot drive? How much free space do you have remaining on it? I recall from somewhere a recommendation that one should keep at least 20% free on one's boot drive because your OS and other programs can use that free space for various purposes. If your boot drive is overly crowded then consider getting an external drive and move files you don't constantly need to that.

 

[Sawday]

No extensions and on my boot drive I have 280Gb free of 1Tb. I have three external disks connected. Laxton which is 5Tb used for TM, Bramley which is 1Tb with 128Gb free and Braeburn which has 200Gb of it's 2Tb free.

 

[DEyncourt]

Not related to your browser downloading problem, but might I suggest that you should edit your last post to remove your external drive names and only refer to them generically (like "My TimeMachine external drive is 5 TB"). I would not do this but having those drive names could enable a hostile abuser points of entry. Just remember: sometimes hackers will try things just because they CAN.

NO extensions for your browsers? At all? You are more tolerant of ads than me.

Just to line up possible differences, I have:
2021 16" MacBook Pro 18,2 M1Max with a 2 TB SSD which has 1.15 TB free, 64 GB RAM (yes, I have planned on being able to use this machine for many years)
macOS 13.2 (22D49)
Safari 16.3 (18614.4.6.1.5)
Firefox 109.0.1
I believe all software versions are the latest available.

I use Firefox to do most of my web browsing. I have locked down Firefox to run WITHOUT JavaScript at all.

Of course a lot of stuff on the web requires JavaScript, so for such I use Safari. I often will open an new (to me) site with Firefox, then if that site is blank there I will drop that site onto Safari.

As I mentioned before: I can download with both Firefox and Safari without locking up during downloads.

 

[krs]

In the last few days whenever I download (in Firefox or Safari) a file the browser locks until the file is almost completely downloaded. I have rebooted and run Onyx. Any ideas how I can resolve this?

I don't understand the problem the way it is described.
You say: "the browser locks until the file is almost completely downloaded."
Do you mean "until"?
How can anything be downloaded if the browser is locked?
If you mean "when" instead of "until", then I would ask:
1. Did you make any changes/updates to the browsers in the last few days when this started happening?
2. Does it happen with all files?
3. I assume by "browser locking" you mean the downlaod proceeds normally and just towards the end of the download, the download stops and the browser becomes completely unresponsive.

For a start, I would install a browser you have never used and try the download using that to see if that works or not.

 

[Sawday]

To clarify: While the file is downloading the browser does not react to any mouse operation and just display the whirling ball whenever the mouse id over the browser window. Other apps continue to work. WHen the downlown is almost complete (evidenced byt the icon at top right) normal operation resumes.

 

[krs]

To clarify: While the file is downloading the browser does not react to any mouse operation and just display the whirling ball whenever the mouse id over the browser window. Other apps continue to work. WHen the downlown is almost complete (evidenced byt the icon at top right) normal operation resumes.

If this only happens occasionally for specific files, that operation is normal if the hardware of your Mac needs additional time to handle the software task at hand.
Bit of a description here:

Troubleshoot the spinning beach ball

Apple calls it the Spinning Wait Cursor. Others call it the Spinning Beach Ball of Death or the Marble of Doom. Whatever you call it, it's a pain. Here's what you should do when it appears.

www.macworld.com

If this bothers you and if this never happened before when downloading a similar file, you can try to see where the resource bottleneck is.
First thing I would try is another browser you have not used before to see if you have the same issue.

 

[Rod]

So, you say, “in the last few days”. Can I assume that this never happened before?
The spinning thing generally indicates a lack of system resources so it’s trying to find resources by pausing some processes, in your case your active browser window.

So this beggars the questions what system resources do you have eg, processor CPU and RAM and what’s using them up?

I suggest that when this happens you have a look at Activity Monitor and see what process/s is/are draining your %CPU.

 

[Rod]

In my experience the most likely culprits are background apps like anti malware and performance monitoring apps and their helper utilities. Check your menu bar for items like OneDrive, DropBox, and others that update online regularly. Even things like iStat Menus use up some resources.

 

[Sawday]

Hi Rod. I have 16Gb Ram. I have checked activity monitor and no obvious hogs apart from Firefox and things like Kernel Task, WindowServer, launcd and mds_stores which I have no idea what they do. There is always about 12 copies of FIrefocCP Isolated Web Content and I don't know what that is either. I don't use Onedrive or Dropbox nor anything else that updates regularly as far as I know.

 

[ferrarr]

FIrefocCP Isolated Web Conten

That's a Firefox item. How many tabs/windows are open?

 

[Rod]

I just did a search for FirefoxCP Isolated Web Content and found this on the Mozilla site; "FirefoxCP Isolated Web Content" is slowly consuming all of my Mac's memory.
It seems a number of people are complaining about similar or identical problems with FirefoxCP Isolated Web Content not to mention Firefox Web Extensions which on my M1 is using a total 541MB but I dont use it much.
With 5 tabs open Firefox plus FirefoxCP Isolated Web Content is using 3.85GB of memory on my device. Just for interest I launched CMM X then quit it again. It's helper utility (which I usually quit too) Health Monitor is using 62MB just FYI, maybe it tipped you over the limit.

Bottom line here, Firefox is a Memory hog, add to that, applications with background utilities running full time just use up your resources.

In comparison, with 6 open Tabs Brave browser is using 586MB, thats including Renderer's and Helper (GPU).

Have a look at this panel at the bottom in Activity Monitor Memory Tab;


You can see (with Firefox off) I'm only using about half of my physical memory, try doing the same then with the Activity Monitor open launch Firefox and download a file.

 

[Rod]

I just did a search for FirefoxCP Isolated Web Content and found this on the Mozilla site; "FirefoxCP Isolated Web Content" is slowly consuming all of my Mac's memory.
It seems a number of people are complaining about similar or identical problems with FirefoxCP Isolated Web Content not to mention Firefox Web Extensions which on my M1 is using a total 541MB but I dont use it much.
With 5 tabs open Firefox plus FirefoxCP Isolated Web Content is using 3.85GB of memory on my device. Just for interest I launched CMM X then quit it again. It's helper utility (which I usually quit too) Health Monitor is using 62MB just FYI, maybe it tipped you over the limit.

Bottom line here, Firefox is a Memory hog, add to that, applications with background utilities running full time just use up your resources.

In comparison, with 6 open Tabs Brave browser is using 586MB, thats including Renderer's and Helper (GPU).

Have a look at this panel at the bottom in Activity Monitor Memory Tab;

You can see (with Firefox off) I'm only using about half of my physical memory, try doing the same then with the Activity Monitor open launch Firefox and download a file.

 

[Sawday]

Thanks Rod, that's interesting. I did look briefly at Brave a while ago. I'll take another look and see if problem resolves. I'll also try Safari again with Firefox off - I'm pretty sure I had it still running before.

 

[Rod]

As surprising as those numbers were I'm still puzzled why with 16GB of RAM you would see this behavior. Do try checking Activity Monitor while performing a download with all your usual apps and tabs running.

 

[Sawday]

I seem to have resolved this issue. I deleted ALL cookies and cashes and rebooted. A bt of a pain having to re-login to all my favourite sites but downloads now run without issue. I did, however, use Brave for a day and quite liked it and will give it a more extended use this week to give it a really good try out.