3rd party browser issues under catalina?

Thanks for all the advice. As did R. Cooke, I took everyone's advice and uninstalled Sophos Home antivirus, and that seemed to solve my problem. Firefox is working as it did prior to installing Catalina. Thank you all for your help!

Uninstall Sophos and any other third party anti virus app you may have installed.

I can't say what Chrome does but I do use Firefox most of time, currently v68.0.2. It will on rare occasions freeze for no apparent reason. Usually with a half dozen tabs open. Sometimes depending on which tabs. Personally I think it's a Firefox issue since it would do the same thing on Mojave.

Quitting then restarting Firefox works for me. Never had to restart a Mac.

I wholeheartedly second dialabrain's recommendation regarding Sophos and anti-virus apps in general. The tend to do more hard to a system's performance than good.'

This also goes for any "cleaning", "optimizing" or "speedup" apps. If you want to protect your Mac then read and following the recommendations in this user tip: Effective defenses against malware and other threats - Apple Community

You'd be best served by uninstalling Sophos and not install any antivirus program. They are not needed on a Mac and are known to cause all sorts of problems.

Totally agree except with me, I can relaunch after restart. Don't hold your breath about Safari. I had to use it, but it is also showing signs of the problems with Chrome and Firefox hangups. As I mentioned in another response, Apple "genius" bar tried to fix the Firefox issue, but said if the problem reoccurs then to contact Firefox not them!!!!!!!

I'm trying to get my Apple backed up on an external drive (Apple won't do this), then go to the "genius" bar to get Mohave reinstalled and Catalina removed. I hope I don't screw up because I'm a simple user not a computer geek.

Important programmes like Office and Adobe will also cease to function unless you buy/subscribe to their new versions.

I'm writing this on Chrome, but don't expect it to remain stable for the day - another restart!

This is one reason to advise others to NOT install Catalina. Both Chrome & Firefox hang or crash for no apparent reason. Took mine to Apple "genius" bar. Got it back but problem reoccurred.

They are obviously not compatible even though both browsers are 64 bit. Offered solutions on sites like this are often beyond the abilities of simple users like me. Apple and the browsers do not have a patch or fix, so it is unclear which is responsible....each blame the other.

Catalina will also force you to buy or subscribe to apps that you may presently use, like Word and Office, Adobe (pre Catalina) will no longer function because they are 32 bit (whatever that is!). Stick to your present OS or don't upgrade beyond Mohave.

As yet, my only recourse is to restart the computer each time it hangs in Chrome and Firefox. I'm using Safari to post this reply.

Upgrade remorse.

How Apple could send an OS out the door with this problem is enraging. Lost productivity each day as I must reboot once Firefox and Chrome freeze and then can't be relaunched after doing a Force Quit. Annoying that Apple QA seemingly only cared to check that Safari would be stable in Catalina. Clearly didn't care about Firefox or Chrome. Nice to know the mother ship is trying to force our hand and use the inferior Safari browser. Catalina is a productivity disaster.

I have both Firefox and Chrome on my iMac running Catalina. Both 3rd party browsers work for some time and then they become unresponsive. I have to use Force Quit to get out of them but they will not restart after a Force Quit. So the only fix seems to be a reboot which is ridiculous.

ebaygal wrote:

How Apple could send an OS out the door with this problem is enraging.

FWIW, it's up to developers to make sure their apps work with Catalina, not the other way around. That being said, I have no freezes with Firefox 71.0 or Chrome 78.0.3904.108.