Why Windows 11’s Weather App Swallows Over 1 GB of RAM

According to a report cited by Windows Latest, the Windows 11 Weather app uses over 1 GB of RAM even when performing simple tasks such as displaying a forecast, while the macOS Weather app consumes roughly one‑fifth of that amount.

Wccftech observed that memory usage starts around 1 GB, drops to 500–600 MB when idle, and can rise to 1.5–1.6 GB during basic interactions like zooming or navigation. On an 8 GB machine this accounts for nearly 20 % of total RAM.

The high consumption is attributed to the app not being a fully native Windows program. It runs inside a WebView2 container, which embeds the full Chromium engine—including JavaScript, CSS, and rendering subsystems—inside a Windows shell. Real‑time data updates, background polling, and UI animations further increase the memory footprint.

While the Chromium engine is necessary for complex web‑based desktop apps, the Weather app’s functionality (displaying temperature) does not justify loading an entire browser stack, leading to unnecessary resource waste.

Microsoft’s strategy of using WebView2 lowers development costs by allowing front‑end engineers to build apps with HTML/CSS/JS instead of native C++/WinUI/WPF. However, this cost saving for developers translates into a heavy memory burden for users, especially on systems with 8 GB or 16 GB of RAM, where the app can force the OS to rely more on paging and degrade responsiveness.

The article argues that the industry’s rapid adoption of web‑based desktop frameworks (Electron, WebView2) has outpaced consideration of hardware impact, creating a situation where developers deliver products quickly but without sufficient scrutiny of their resource efficiency.

Microsoft has pledged to develop more fully native Windows apps in the future, though it remains unclear whether the Weather app and other MSN‑branded utilities will be rebuilt with WinUI.