Firefox AI tab grouping triggers battery complaints
Mozilla’s latest Firefox update, version 141, has rolled out AI-powered tab grouping as a headline feature — but instead of streamlining browsing, it is drawing criticism from users who report heavy CPU usage, increased memory demand, and rapid battery drain.
Performance concerns surface quickly
The feature, which uses an on-device artificial intelligence model to detect related tabs, group them, and assign descriptive names, was presented as a productivity boost. Users can even click ‘Suggest more tabs for group’ to expand sets with additional AI-recommended pages.
However, multiple reports on the Firefox subreddit suggest the performance cost is outweighing the benefits. One user, u/st8ic88, reported that their device was struggling after the update.
“I don’t want this garbage bloating my browser, blowing up my CPU, and killing my battery life. There is absolutely no reason for it, it’s not a good feature, and it’s absolutely humiliating for Firefox to be jumping on this bandwagon.”
– u/st8ic88
Another user monitoring their system in Conky noted that the ‘Inference’ process — believed to handle Firefox’s AI tasks — was responsible for the resource spike. Terminating the process caused the browser to crash, requiring a restart. Others mentioned “fans spin like crazy” or memory usage climbing far above normal levels.
Why it happens
The AI grouping runs through a two-step process entirely on the user’s device:
Grouping tabs: An embedding model analyses tab titles, converts them into numerical vectors, and applies clustering algorithms to identify related pages.
Naming Groups: Mozilla’s smart-tab-topic model, based on Google’s T5 architecture, suggests a name using a c-tf-idf algorithm to extract key terms from titles and descriptions.
While this design avoids sending browsing data to remote servers — unlike Chrome’s experimental Tab organiser — it can still place a heavy computational load on systems with many tabs open.
The format debate
Some in the community suspect performance problems stem from Mozilla’s choice to use Microsoft’s Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX) format for the AI models. Critics say alternative formats, such as GGUF by Georgi Gerganov, may run more efficiently on local hardware. Switching formats would, however, require re-engineering parts of Firefox’s AI infrastructure.
Mixed reactions from users
Supporters argue the feature helps manage large tab collections, especially during research. Skeptics counter that it automates something they prefer to handle manually — and at a high performance cost. This debate reflects a wider industry divide, as more software integrates AI without universal options to disable it.
How to disable AI tab grouping
Firefox does not offer a single ‘turn off all AI’ switch, but users can disable the grouping feature through advanced settings:
1. Type `about: config` into the address bar and accept the warning.
2. Search for `browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled’.
3. Double-click to change the value from `true` to `false`.
4. Restart the browser.
Users can also remove downloaded AI models via the `about: addons` page.
Mozilla has indicated more AI features are planned for Firefox this year, aligning with a broader industry trend that includes Microsoft’s AI-powered Edge and Chrome’s server-side AI experiments. Yet for users dealing with sluggish systems, battery drain, or inaccurate grouping — such as shopping tabs labelled ‘Outdoor Cooking’ despite containing tech and clothing links — the question remains: is this a productivity upgrade, or a resource-hungry distraction?
