Noscript causing tabs to hang in Firefox

[thelongshot]

Since mods want me to make a new post...

This problem started a couple of days ago. After a time, anytime I try to access a new page in a tab, or create a new tab, it will endlessly hang. Looking at devtools, there are no errors and just a GET for the requested page. Disabling Noscript causes the page to load. Restarting the browser fixes the problem for a while, until it happens again.

Latest Firefox (116.0.2) and NoScript (11.4.26). The only other add-ons I have are Fanatical Assistant and Rakuten, which have been on here for a long time with no issues. I haven't made any changes to Firefox recently.

[barbaz]

What OS is this on?
How pervasive is this hang throughout Firefox? You said there are no errors in Web Console, but are you able to look at about:debugging > This Firefox > NoScript > Inspect, Console, while this is happening? or at the multiprocess Browser Console (Ctrl-Shift-J, select "Multiprocess (Slower)")?

Please create a clean profile from scratch. Install only NoScript latest development build, leaving all the defaults.
Does the problem still exist?
If not, what if you then import your NoScript settings into the clean profile using the Import and Export buttons in NoScript Options?
If that still doesn't reproduce the problem, it's not a NoScript issue... try Standard Diagnostic (leaving NoScript enabled) to isolate and correct the real cause.

Let us know, thanks.

[thelongshot]

Ok, so when it first happened, I brought up the console and this is what it was showing.



After a few minutes, the page actually loaded, but when I tried after that, it was frozen again, showing this.



I'll try the new profile thing later.

[thelongshot]

So far, haven't gotten the same behavior with the new profile.

[thelongshot]

Are there any next steps here? I'd rather not have to start over with a clean profile just to get this working again.

Jason

[barbaz]

Thanks for reporting back the results so far.

try Standard Diagnostic (leaving NoScript enabled) to isolate and correct the real cause.

Sorry, maybe wasn't clear that this part of the troubleshooting is for your main profile. The results of this are needed to have any idea what the next steps would be.

[thelongshot]

Sorry. My reading comprehension skills are at fault.

[Flyp]

My main desktop (most powerful) in the house is running Ubuntu MATE and Firefox has little issues and neither do the extensions there.
Huge difference on my weakest desktop (I have 3, the iMac's Firefox finally runs smoothly since the last couple years on macOS), on my Win10 desktop, which has more ram than my iMac, loads Edge and Chrome with extensions really fast without memory hogging, with Firefox it is an entirely different story, depending on the sites of course, but just opening Firefox is much, much slower than Edge of Chrome. I haven't tried others, I'd try Brave or Opera just for fun but I think it'd just be frustrating and that Windows 10 Pro (or win10 vanilla), don't know about win11, I will never install that OS, is OS hardcoded to make Firefox feel undesirable and push the users towards Edge or at least Chrome, since Edge is basically a modified Chrome now.

[barbaz]

Flyp, sorry if I'm missing something but how is that related to OP's issue?

[Flyp]

Well it is because generally Firefox on Windows, unlike other OS's, nowadays is significantly slower, unresponsive at times, even when mitigating extensions essentials such as NoScript are installed. I was just mentioning how I experienced what OP is mentioning here and other unpleasantness on my thankfully, very secondary, mostly media-centre in the livingroom windows 10 pro desktop with Firefox, issues that are non existent on multiple Linux distros with Firefox+NoScript or even macOS Firefox+NoScript. Sorry if I was unclear.

[nemo]

Same issue here.
Since ~FF119, at some random time (anywhere between a minute & several days) after FF restart, all tabs stop responding (except those with an open session), i.e. new HTTP/S requests go nowhere. Opening F12 on Networking tab shows a request going out and that's it, as if it's "swallowed" by NoScript.
Disabling NoScript solves the freeze temporarily, until it's re-enabled - then everything freezes again. Only "real" solution is to restart FF (and hope the next time will take longer to freeze).
Disabling other extensions has no effect, so this is definitely a NoScript issue.
May be related to free memory (I have more memory at home, where it's much rarer), or some AV (which I have at work but not at home), or specific Windoze version (old Win10 at work, Win11 at home).

[barbaz]

Same issue here.
Since ~FF119,

So as a test, does downgrading to FF 118 fix it?
(Before trying that, completely quit Firefox and back up your Firefox profile. Also, you may need to run FF 118 with the --allow-downgrade command-line option.)

https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/118.0.2/

[nemo]

So as a test, does downgrading to FF 118 fix it?

So far so good...

[barbaz]

Can you reproduce the problem starting from a new, clean Firefox profile in current Firefox release or later? If so, might be worth filing a Firefox bug at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/ with the detailed steps to reproduce, also noting that downgrading to FF 118 fixes it.

[nemo]

As previously stated, the problem is far from predictable, and seems to be highly affected by the complexity of the current FF env.
Installing a fresh FF will remove most of the complexity, so even if the problem pops up, it will probably take a long time, which I'm not going to invest, as I'm using FF as a work env, so what am I going to work with if I don't have my work env?
That being said, the problem does indeed go away when (and only when) NoScript is turned off, so there's something with the interaction of NoScript with FF, which either emerged with FF 119, or got so much worse with FF 119 that it got "floated to the surface".
Is there any way to either have a debug log or any kind of internal status view of NoScript? That will most likely help identify the issue.