browser session restore interval and SSD

[Richmond]

Some time ago, 2016 I think, there was some fuss about the browser
session restore interval being 15 seconds, and how this causes SSD to
wear out. I noticed recently having put firefox on a tablet that the
interval is still 15 seconds. So was anything done about this problem?
or maybe it wasn't a problem, or the solution was just to change the
interval? It's not something one thinks about when installing firefox
for the first time, or re-installing the system.

[Christian Riechers]

You'll have to manually change the the interval.

[PietB]

Richmond wrote:
> Some time ago, 2016 I think, there was some fuss about the browser
> session restore interval being 15 seconds, and how this causes SSD to
> wear out. I noticed recently having put firefox on a tablet that the
> interval is still 15 seconds. So was anything done about this problem?

https://www.mahal.org/change-firefox-session-store-interval-to-save-your-ssd

Note the "One thought on ..." comment from Feb 12.
I can't confirm it, because my FF 52ESR doesn't have the mentioned
browser.sessionstore.interval.idle setting. Maybe it's only in the
newer "normal" releases?

-p

[Richmond]

That's interesting. I couldn't find documentation for it, except
apparently in the source code. I have the setting in 61.0b6 but I don't
think it was in the android version I have.

I don't think people are likely to change these settings though at the
time they install. They won't be thinking about it.

https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/components/sessionstore/SessionSaver.jsm

Where it says:

*
* Minimal interval between two save operations (in milliseconds).
*
* To save system resources, we generally do not save changes
immediately when
* a change is detected. Rather, we wait a little to see if this change is
* followed by other changes, in which case only the last write is
necessary.
* This delay is defined by "browser.sessionstore.interval".
*
* Furthermore, when the user is not actively using the computer, webpages
* may still perform changes that require (re)writing to sessionstore, e.g.
* updating Session Cookies or DOM Session Storage, or refreshing, etc. We
* expect that these changes are much less critical to the user and do not
* need to be saved as often. In such cases, we increase the delay to
* "browser.sessionstore.interval.idle".
*
* When the user returns to the computer, if a save is pending, we
reschedule
* it to happen soon, with "browser.sessionstore.interval".
*/