Comments on: How To: Rapidly Restart Mac Firefox

By: Nick

Nick — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 01:58:01 +0000

Awesome, this works perfectly!! Thanks!!

By: jencc

jencc — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 11:48:44 +0000

thank you thank you! i just got my first mac and firefox hung on me!

By: Leo Hourvitz

Leo Hourvitz — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 23:40:35 +0000

Thanks Paul, awesome post, really helps. For whatever reason, I had to explicitly path the killall and open commands:

/usr/bin/killall firefox-bin; /usr/bin/open /Applications/Firefox.app

I’m pretty much stuck with Firefox because of some extensions I rely on daily (Perapera-kun, Google Bookmark Sync), but if not for that I would surely switch to Camino! Firefox inevitably slows down over time to the point of unusability! I couldn’t really find any record of this in the Mozilla forums, anybody have theories on why this doesn’t get more attention?

Thanks again!

P.S. To the commenter who wondered how to remove the plugin: Open Autmator, browse into “My Workflows” at the bottom of the left-hand pane, select the undesirable plug-in, and hit delete!

By: Rapidly Restart Mac Firefox

Rapidly Restart Mac Firefox — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 02:55:52 +0000

[...] How To: Rapidly Restart Mac Firefox [...]

By: Switchblog » Blog Archive » Rapidly Restart Mac Firefox (or any app)

Switchblog » Blog Archive » Rapidly Restart Mac Firefox (or any app) — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 20:38:47 +0000

[...] Here’s a nice Automator tip when you feel you must start Firefox or other apps for that matter… I am not going to lie, Firefox for OS X is horrible reliability-wise. It crashes all the time, uses exorbitant amounts of physical and virtual RAM, sometimes wonâ€™t let you use the address barâ€¦ you get the point. The best fix is to restart Firefox whenever it begins acting sluggish, selfishly uses a lot of your CPU, etcetera. Unfortunately, that seems to happen more often than Iâ€™d like.How To: Rapidly Restart Mac Firefox – PaulStamatiou.com [...]

By: Matthom

Matthom — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 13:58:48 +0000

I like this idea, and I experience the same sluggishness in Firefox on a Mac. For instance, it will have a major delay when switching tabs, or simply trying to type anywhere on a web page or in the address bar. Eventually the spinning beach ball takes over, and I’m locked out.

What I end up having to do is force-quit Firefox, usually about once every few days.

Does this script work when Firefox is completely locked up, ie: the only way to quit it is with Force Quit?

By: iTunes & Last.fm | Adam Pieniazek

iTunes & Last.fm | Adam Pieniazek — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 23:28:19 +0000

[...] by Paul Stamatiou’s post on a Finder plugin to restart Firefox, I decided to tackle a long standing personal issue with iTunes and [...]

By: Chiara Salvatore - Irrimediabilmente irrecuperabile » Blog Archive » Riavvio rapido di Firefox su Mac

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 08:42:40 +0000

[...] ovviare a tutto ciÃ² e raggiungere il proprio scopo con poco sforzo Paul Stamatiou ha scritto questo post molto interessante e soprattutto efficiente (sperimentato personalmente giÃ da vari [...]

By: Richard Hoskins

Richard Hoskins — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 16:28:23 +0000

In .bashrc:

alias refox='killall firefox-bin; open -a firefox'

Then, ‘refox’ from the shell restarts Firefox.

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 13:53:08 +0000

How do I remove the plugin from Finder? Also, I tried to make one for Safari but it didn’t work. How would one manipulate this script?

By: Josh

Josh — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 02:15:26 +0000

….yup, it works.

Thanks!

By: Josh

Josh — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 02:08:49 +0000

@Paul

Ah, OK.. well my path is:

/Applications/Graphics/Adobe\ Illustrator\ CS3/Adobe\ Illustrator.app/

but in the shell script would it then read” killall illustrator;” ?

By: Paul Stamatiou

Paul Stamatiou — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 01:53:11 +0000

@Josh – Isn’t Illustrator usually within its own folder within the Applications folder? That’s how it is with my CS3 apps.

What you can do is find the application in Finder, then drag it inside of an open terminal window and it will give you the directory. For example, my Illustrator CS3 app is in the following directory:

/Applications/Adobe\ Illustrator\ CS3/Adobe\ Illustrator.app/

Terminal escapes spaces with backward slashes.

By: Josh

Josh — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 01:49:33 +0000

I tried this and it worked as advertised, great stuff! I find that sometimes I need to restart Adobe Illustrator from time to time, even the new CS3 intel native (yay!) version. I tried modify your script by just swapping in “Adobe Illustrator.app” but no luck….

any idea why?

By: Blake Brannon

Blake Brannon — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 22:24:00 +0000

Sweet. You made lifehacker. http://lifehacker.com/software/mac-tip/quickly-restart-any-program-272873.php

By: Techzi » Blog Archive » Mac Tip: Quickly restart any program

Techzi » Blog Archive » Mac Tip: Quickly restart any program — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 22:16:49 +0000

[...] quick access to restart your troubled apps whenever you want—like Quicksilver, for example. How To: Rapidly Restart Mac Firefox [Paul [...]

By: » Mac Tip: Quickly restart any program

» Mac Tip: Quickly restart any program — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 22:09:05 +0000

[...] quick access to restart your troubled apps whenever you want—like Quicksilver, for example. How To: Rapidly Restart Mac Firefox [Paul [...]

By: Mac Tip: Quickly restart any program

Mac Tip: Quickly restart any program — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 21:37:53 +0000

[...] quick access to restart your troubled apps whenever you want—like Quicksilver, for example. How To: Rapidly Restart Mac Firefox [Paul [...]

By: BOK

BOK — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 21:14:54 +0000

How odd..! Firefox is my browser of (1st) choice on Mac OS X (iBook G4 with 768MB RAM) for over a year now. It starts up somewhat slow, but it hardly crashes.
Must be external factors leading to this behavior, like (indeed) extensions. I’ve got some >15 installed, but still…
Can’t live without ‘em, as all of them are also installed cross-platform on WinXP, Linux and at work. As long as there’s no good alternative on all platforms I’m using, there’s no way to switch!

By: AppleScript, Automator, Firefox « Lamiere

AppleScript, Automator, Firefox « Lamiere — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 19:23:14 +0000

[...] e nel complesso mi sembrava abbastanza inutile poi ora a pochi mesi di distanza da Leopard scopro sta cosa che ci si possono fare anche gli script di shell che non tutti sanno cosa sono ma son cose potenti [...]

By: Adim Ofunne

Adim Ofunne — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 14:16:20 +0000

This is really essential for me, great post. Firefox has been driving me crazy for a while now

By: Donald Jenkins

Donald Jenkins — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 08:25:15 +0000

I’ve given up on FF, as even the BonEcho version is too crash-prone and sluggish. I’ve reverted to Safari 3 and/or Omniweb, which I find more reliable when, like me, you tend to open numerous tabs at once.

While I miss the Firefox add-ons which no one seems to have bothered to make accessible in Safari, I find actually you can do without them in most cases. If I really need it FF is still there anyway, but not for everyday browsing. What I missed most was better Gmail and I’ve solved that one by reverting to Apple Mail as my primary email application.

By: Paul Stamatiou

Paul Stamatiou — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 02:46:24 +0000

@piratepete – OS X Firefox is bad for me whatever computer I’m on. Even on my week old MacBook Pro.

By: piratepete

piratepete — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 02:29:00 +0000

Runs great on my intel imac. Maybe you need a fresh install, run some cron scripts??

By: Yohannes Wijaya

Yohannes Wijaya — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 20:34:10 +0000

Thanks Paul for the tip! Alternatively you can also type “open -a firefox” on the 2nd part of the command.