Firefox has a fame of being one thing of a useful resource hog, even amongst fashionable browsers. But it won’t be totally earned, as a result of it appears to be like like a CPU bug affecting Firefox customers on Windows was truly the fault of Windows Defender. The newest replace to the ever-present safety instrument addresses the difficulty, and may end in measurably decrease CPU utilization for the Windows model of Firefox.

According to Mozilla senior software program engineer Yannis Juglaret (by way of Neowin), the offender was MsMpEng.exe, which you would possibly acknowledge out of your Task Manager. It handles the Real-Time safety function that displays net exercise for malicious threats. The bug was inflicting Firefox to name on the service far more regularly than comparable browsers like Chrome or Edge, leading to notable CPU spikes. Said CPU spikes might cut back efficiency in different functions or have an effect on a laptop computer’s battery life.

The problem was first reported on Mozilla’s bug tracker system way back in 2018 and shortly assigned to the MsMpEng service, however some newer and diligent documentation on the a part of Juglaret resulted in additional swift motion from Microsoft’s builders. The patched version of Windows Defender is now rolling out to Windows 10 and Windows 11 customers, and may hit all of them (until they particularly block the replace) inside the subsequent week or two.