Windows 11 Weather App Wastes Over 1 GB of RAM, Contradicting Microsoft's Performance Efforts

Microsoft's built-in Weather app in Windows 11 has been found to consume more than 1 GB of RAM, according to tests conducted by Windows Latest. This excessive memory usage is particularly concerning given that Microsoft has been working to improve the operating system's performance on lower-end hardware.

The Weather app, which is essentially an MSN Weather web app built on Microsoft's WebView2 framework, uses multiple Chromium-based subprocesses running simultaneously, contributing to its high RAM usage. This means that even on PCs with 8 GB of RAM, the application alone may occupy nearly 20% of the system's memory.

By comparison, Apple's native Weather app on macOS reportedly uses less than 250 MB of RAM under similar conditions, giving Microsoft's implementation a memory footprint roughly five times larger. The high memory consumption is unlikely to affect high-end PCs with 32 GB or more of RAM but could have a noticeable impact on entry-level systems.