These Windows apps are real memory hogs
If Windows performance suffers despite modern hardware, you should check the task manager. Popular chat tools are now real memory hogs and push systems to their limits. The cause lies in the use of web wrappers instead of native apps.
Resource hunger of modern chat apps
While the prices for hardware, especially memory, are rising noticeably due to the ongoing AI boom, and even manufacturers like Lenovo are hoarding the corresponding components, popular Windows applications are becoming increasingly wasteful with the available capacities. The communication apps Microsoft Teams, Discord and WhatsApp are currently being criticized because they take up enormous amounts of RAM even when idle. On systems with 16 GB of RAM or less, this can quickly lead to noticeable bottlenecks and system sluggishness. The technical background for this growing hunger for resources lies in the gradual move away from natively programmed applications towards so-called web wrappers.
Instead of optimizing software specifically and efficiently for the Windows API, developers are increasingly relying on frameworks such as Electron or WebView2. These basically embed a full Chromium-based web browser into the application window. The result is a significantly higher memory load, as separate processes and sandboxing mechanisms have to be started for each instance, each chat and sometimes even for individual plug-ins. What makes sense for security in the browser becomes a performance trap on the desktop.
Discord, Teams, WhatsApp
The situation is now so tense that manufacturers are resorting to unusual measures. How Windows Latest reports, Discord has officially confirmed that its own client under Windows 11 tends to consume massive amounts of memory. In extreme cases, the app based on the Electron framework can use up to four gigabytes of RAM. Instead of fundamentally optimizing the architecture, Discord is currently testing a kind of emergency brake: If memory usage exceeds four gigabytes and the user is inactive, the app should automatically restart itself to forcibly free up the memory.
The problem is also known at Microsoft, but the solutions often only seem like drops in the ocean. Microsoft Teams, which now uses WebView2 across the board, often uses up to a gigabyte of RAM when idle. If the user joins a meeting, this value increases further through video rendering and screen sharing. The group is therefore planning an update for January 2026 that will outsource the calling functions to a separate process called ‘ms-teams_modulehost.exe’.
Regression through web technologies
A look at the recent past of app development shows that more efficient programming would be possible. The previous desktop version of WhatsApp was based on the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) and often had to make do with less than 100 MB of RAM in the background. The current version, which also functions as a web wrapper, reserves many times this amount when it starts and often seems slower to use. Here, users trade modern features for pure system performance.
For companies, switching to web technologies is above all an economic calculation. A single JavaScript base can be used across platforms for Windows, macOS and Linux, saving development time and costs. However, the price is paid by the user in the form of poorer performance and higher storage requirements. That’s unlikely to change any time soon.
