Windows 11 Weather App Eats Up to 1.2GB of RAM

Microsoft's default Weather app in Windows 11 has been found to consume up to 1.2 GB of RAM while simply sitting open on a forecast screen, according to testing by Windows Latest.

The MSN Weather app, which provides live radar, hourly forecasts, wind and precipitation data, air-quality readings, and moon phases, launches as many as nine Chromium-based subprocesses, suggesting it's built around a web wrapper rather than a fully native application.

While the app's interface is modern and works smoothly, its high memory use stands out when compared to Apple's Weather app on macOS, which uses about 250 MB of RAM while providing similar forecast details - roughly five times less than MSN Weather.

The report arrives as Microsoft has been talking more openly about Windows 11 performance, including removing recommendations for gaming PCs with 32 GB of RAM and stating that the operating system is optimized to run smoothly on systems with 8 GB of memory.