WhatsApp is the worst app on your Windows 11 PC right now, eating 1.2GB of RAM doing nothing
https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/06/13/whatsapp-is-eating-1-2gb-ram-on-windows-11-even-as-microsoft-kills-web-app-slop/Open linkView original on futurology.today608
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Counterpoint: no, it's not, because I'm not stupid enough to install it.
Or own a Windows PC!
Sadly, I have one that I need for some freelance work. But I don't use it too much.
Born in the PWA it was.
(I figure this limits what it can scrape from any OS.)
Oh, it's most likely doing something. Just nothing you would want.
Wouldn't Windows 11 be the worst app on your Windows 11 PC? 🤔
It's probably just teams, right?
It's all sharepoint under the hood.
Only for some file storage. The Teams app is a memory hog and hot garbage all on its own.
I was joking for sure. Most of M365 is a hodgepodge of Exchange and Sharepoint, including Teams. But that's all server side, so doesn't matter to the client. They could make a the clients not terrible even if the server is hot garbage.
bitlocker and the encrypt without permission resulting in loss of all files still takes the cake for me
windows update boot loop is a close second
I once read a story about a Teams team in microslop Teams, was hilarious.
Technically.... Yes.
Without having read the article, lemme guess... Electron.
Maybe now that no-one can afford RAM these companies might get motivated to do something about that. Hell, I'd accept them just feeling shamed into not being the worst memory hog on your system at this point, over any altruistic reason.
See also: Discord and Slack, two other colossal wastes of space that use an order of magnitude more RAM than a native app would while running slower and providing absolutely zero other benefits.
The worst part about electron is that there is no way for it to share resources like a browser. You have to oacjage the whole version together, when really should should have been more like a pwa. Instead you have 10 electron instances, running with 10x the respurce needs.
that's why you just skip the middleman and run it in your browser instead.
my friend has 16gb of ram and he keeps hitting out-of-memory errors when he has like 5 apps open, because they’re all electron and they all take like 2gb each, it’s ridiculous
Your friend has disabled the swap file. Never a good idea.
To be honest I'd rather get OOM errors in my consumer OS than endless disk thrashing. At least mechanical drives were more resilient and you could hear the thrashing, as opposed to silent massive wear on your SSDs.
I run 32GB and I still run a swapfile. My ssd is still going after 3 years, but everything dies.
My SSDs are like ten to 15 years old, none are dead at this point. The cargo cult of swap files trashing everything.
I used to make use of a 64 GB RAM machine that still swapped like crazy, because I'm a shitty programmer (not really my field). I totally destroyed my SSD by swapping daily huge amounts of data, but the thing survived the whole process. Of course it died, but under normal circumstances I can't see why people would be preoccupied for wearing their SSDs.
They don't care if you can't afford it. Data centers are buying them by the truckload.
OP was talking about the software companies, not the ram companies
Interestingly, in Microsoft's Build Conference this year, they were pushing for "Native applications" again. This is probably two fold, one because RAM is getting so expensive we'll probably start seeing 8GB laptops again, and two because AI will make something in whatever framework you tell it to, and has no problem maintaining separate code bases for each supported OS. Of course, that just means more tokens used as far as Microsoft is concerned, which is a win for them.
People using Meta's products are masochists.
"Yes, daddy, please violate my privacy even more and manipulate me into hating myself and making me addicted to your shit."
Well most people dont have any other option since 100% of your friends and families are exclusively on WhatsApp , whatsapp had early mover advantage it was free and easy to use so now everyone just uses it
so did my-space
Social media and chat applications are different, better comparison would be Skype or MSN Messenger or AIM.
And how long did it stay around even though there was a better option? And how much more penetration into everyday life does WhatsApp have today? Right.
If your friends can not be arsed to install an app on their phone for you, I got some bad news.
Actually it's not just friends ( we did shifted to telegram a while back ) most people where I am from use WhatsApp grand parents to grand parents to even some college official group ( yeah Ik )
My government and employers would not move away from WhatsApp, so, short of lobbying, I am forced to remain.
No, the worst app is Windows 11. My parents have some all-in-one HP PC. It has some Intel laptop processor from about 8 years ago, 16GB of ram, (upgraded from 8), and a wheezy 256GB spinning drive, running Win10 adequately.
After being bombarded with "upgrade to Windows 11! It's easy and fun!!" notifications, they did so, and of course their PC is woefully underpowered for the job.
I log in remotely and check what's running and the OS is paging to the swap file constantly. [Edit: and I mean, to the point where opening an application takes 60 seconds of disk thrashing for a window to appear]
I had to get a de-bloat script and turn off about 50 Microsoft "essential services". The biggest hog out of them all was copilot, which was using about 4GB while sitting there idle.
I have no doubt that I'm going to have to run that script every month as everything gets "repaired", until I can get back to their place and put a SSD in and maybe install some flavour of Linux.
And then a Windows Update comes along...
Install Linux, Problem Solved.
My MILs computer has 8 GB of RAM... I have not yet convinced her she needs a new computer, but I did just install windows 10 iot ltsc on it so it will at least get security patches.
put that script in task scheduler on repeat. let it run every day
If you put in an ssd, Windows should run just fine.
Yeah, it's on the to-do list. I still don't like it endlessly paging though. I also hate Microsoft's push to get everyone on win11 even if their PC's will run like asthmatic slugs.
I have found every single PC of mine has benefitted from running Win11. Even those that don't meet the criteria. It's a solid OS.
If they were happy with 10 give them Mint, they won't even notice if you skin it.
Oh it's doing plenty. Just not for you.
This person fundamentally misunderstands RAM on Windows...
Apps reserve a portion of the total available memory. That memory is not necessarily in use. Memory not in use will still be available to other applications as soon as the system reallocates it when a given application needs more. Usually of you have more RAM, applications will reserve more of it. You can check a better explanation of your current memory usage in the windows resource monitor. You'll see memory allocated, memory in use, and memory being used to cache data (which windows does to reduce disk reads and writes), as well as memory completely unallocated. Chrome can easily allocate 1/3 of your total available memory by the third tab, but that doesn't mean chrome is actually using that much.
I mean it's an electron app. Maybe the number is inflated, but it's still a ton. The previous number he compared to (100mb) would be equally inflated, so it's fair
Why would anyone put WhatsApp on their computer?
Stop using meta people!
"Stop using meta people!" sounds like a protest chant for the second-class citizens of a B-grade cyberpunk dystopia.
but we are second-class citizens in a B-grade cyberpunk dystopia...
All you need is a lack of comma, huh!
unfortunately switching away from messengers like this is much harder than other stuff cuz you have to move your entire social network over. it can be done, but unless all your friends and family are also foss and privacy nerds it’s going to be difficult
then again idk if it’s possible, but if it is, you should at least use whatsapp within a web browser. it may even consume less ram that way lol
It isn't hard to make that move though it's just inconvenient. I wouldn't play along, friends and family can fuck right off if they wont leave. It's directly funding so many nasty things I can't be part of it.
WhatsApp is used for businesses a ton here in the EU. A customer-facing business owner like a cafe/restaurant it is almost required in some places. So much much more than "inconvenient"
That's interesting. I'm surprised there isn't a bigger backlash to requiring WhatsApp with the digital sovereignty push I've been hearing about. I work for a US based SaaS provider, and we spent a lot of marketing and sales resources assuring European businesses that we aren't part of the American push to take over the entire tech world.
True, I have to deal with this regularly.
They dont get my business or we work something else out.
How is using Whatsapp for free funding anything?
It is part of the larger Meta machine. Do you not ask to yourself, why are they letting me use this for free? It is a data harvester and tracker. It keeps you in the metaverse. It is a way to make the ad revenue for you worth more.
All these free services somehow add up to 60 billion in profit every year. And they are expanding, they plan to spend 125-135 billion in AI data centers. They are going to build data centers that will use hundreds of gigawatts in over 10 locations. The power used by each is in the scale of the same as powering all of San Francisco with some of these as 2 to 6 times as much as San Fransisco to put it into perspective.
They are going to use about 1,000 to 2000 acres each, use 1 to 3 million gallons of water a day (one site is asking for a permit to use 23 million gallons a day).
All because of people are using "free" apps.
I don't have Facebook or Instagram. I use WhatsApp to communicate with my family that are a mix of iOS and Android. I have never seen an ad. As I posted, my WhatsApp uses about 320MB of ram. I have nothing to be outraged about.
You are still contributing to the same situation. It harvests data, keeping you in the system and tracking your habits and connections. From recent reports meta is also reading everything you say. Who you connect to. Where you are.
You could use any other app you want to and not need this one.
You are actively participating in paying for metas activities, maybe that is worth thinking about.
As you are as well by being on Lemmy. Just stop with the fear mongering. You claim ads. I don't see ads. The goal posts keep moving.
There are advertisements inside of WhatsApp, advertisements in turn make money, that money goes to meta. I hope this helps you understand.
I use Whatsapp every day and I've never seen an ad. There's no need to be so condescending.
I get the privacy concerns but social isolation is worse for you. Do what you can and don't stress that much about it.
Privacy is a tiny part of it. It's the directly supporting and funding a multi billion dollar corporation that is actively make everything worse for everyone. Go look at all their planned projects.
The easiest thing to do is not play along. If you are relying on whatsapp for socializing doesn't that make you want to leave even more?
No, why would that be the case? All these companies are terrible and there's so much that boycotting can do without isolating you from your social circles. Here in Brazil it was already weird to be telling people I don't have Instagram. Not having WhatsApp means you won't do a lot of stuff, including talking to your doctor. It's not my choice, it's a systemic dependence and yeah, it sucks.
Gotta break the cycle somehow. Participating is being complicit.
I too had that issue with a doctor. I worked it out though. It's hard when everyone depends on WhatsApp, but I refuse to play along. I will hang out with people who get that, I don't want to associate with people who don't care.
I wish and I am accumulating contacts on Signal as of late. But removing WhatsApp is impossible off my phone. Literally everyone are using it around here and I wish they wouldn't.
Then remove it. Someone has to take a stand. I did. Yes everyone around me used it too. If they support a worse world, AI, billionaires and fascism I don't really want to communicate with them anyways.
Why would anyone put Windows on their computer?
Not too sure about the 'doing nothing' part.
True.
My Windows 11 PC? Where?
My Linux PC doesn't have WhatsApp installed. Someone tell me where this Windows 11 PC is so I can retrieve it and install Linux on that too.
Anything owned by facebook is already the worst app on whatever device it's installed on.
I don't know who is doing the testing, but they don't know what they're doing. 313MB
Look at mr moneybags over here
The screenshot is from my $300 HP Elite Desk 4. It doesn't support Win11, but I installed it anyway.
Oh, you meant Claude. I use the free version to help me write automations and dashboards for Home Assistant. I have never given Anthropic a dime.
You cannot fish in lemmy as it's a website. Thank you for your understanding.
Can I at least get my bait back?
Your setup, with Win11 and Claude is the bait.
Fable is so expensive. I made a Blinko notes desktop app on Opencode last night using Minimax M3 and it would have cost me 3000usd if I was using Fable.
Why Edge? (Still Chrome)
Why Claude?
WhatsApp depends on how much TEAM your PC has and what other software is running in order to change its cache. Maybe the tester/author has a lot of RAM and saw this "huge" usage.
Personally, if I bought 64GB of RAM, by god I'm going to use it!! Why buy lots of RAM and be stingy??
Just because you have RAM to give, doesn't mean an app should use it. An app that is using way more than it typically uses often means the app has lost control in some way (a memory leak). An app that has lost control will usually have performance or other issues.
Well, fine, right, I'm not saying I want something to use all 64GB, but I'm not going to be upset if something used a few GB. Chrome OS that way where it'll eat up all avail RAM, hence why so many memes. A lot of applications are written poorly and yes, RAM utilization will grow, but again, if I've got it, in many cases might as well use it.
Apps can reserve RAM without using it. It is totally normal for apps to do this on every modern OS. Linux included. The amount of RAM reserved is not the same as the amount of RAM that app is using. And apps don't have a strangle hold on R being reserved unless that RAM is actually in use. Windows will automatically take reserved RAM away from one app and give it to another app that is out of its reserve space. This is all very normal.
It's something I've always done. I pick an app. ie: Firefox but then at some point I'll go to the alternative to see if it has something I might have missed. This way I can evaluate it myself rather than rely on someone else's bias. I've been using Edge for about 3 months now, and it really isn't that bad. I'm going to try Brave next.
As I mentioned earlier, I use the free version of Claude to help me with automations and dashboards in Home Assistant. It really is an incredible tool.
I don't know what that means. How much TEAM my PC has? You saw what Edge was using. This PC, which basically is a boy doing a man's job, has 32GB of RAM. It runs all of my 'ARR' apps.
I just don't see the issue with Whatsapp. It runs perfectly fine of my crappy HP I7 7700 PC.
Ohhh my bad, stupid swipe text corrected ram to team I guess...
Edge isn't a bad browser as far as functionality goes, but far from secure. But it's gotta I discovered vertical tabs while at work, so I added that extension in Firefox and now that's native too.
Btw, my PC has 32gb of ram where WhatsApp is using 320MB.
Oh. OK well that's good! Idk, maybe the tester left the PC running really long or just ran a bunch of convos to rack up RAM usage for the article
When I reported my Whatsapp was using 320MB it had been running for a week. The writer is just not that good when it comes to analyzing technology. He wants to trigger outrage, which it seems he has done.
I'm shocked to learn that a dedicated browser always running in the background for a chat app uses 100x the memory and resources
I'm not using it nor the Facebook Messenger app, but rather their messenger in the browser. Meta is an evil necessity in my country because the businesses I deal with are mostly active on Facebook, and almost all people are tethered to it, and I have to use a facade where I don't have to give Zuck anything about myself.
It's most definitely doing alot
The doing alot gets a lot done.
Alot of Doing is a very productive alot.
microsoft committments to ui frameworks can be gotten in bulk, for free at your nearest flea market
Where you fucked up is installing and using WhatsApp to begin with. It’s been shit since meta bought it.
And Windows.
Exactly, if you’re still using windows in 2026, wtf are you even doing?!
Sadly, Linux currently just isn't a one-to-one replacement for Windows, which is enough of a reason for most people to stay. (I say this as a Linux user myself)
I can’t imagine using anything under Meta’s control for personal communication.
What Windows 11 pc exactly? 😎
That one.
Ew. Why not use the browser version
There is no other version. An electron app is a browser app.
You can still just open it in the browser
How will that help?
Or they’re mining your data….?
I have a Windows 11 PC with WhatsApp?
Pah, only 1.2GB? How can it even move a mouse pointer or accept keyboard input?!?
WhatsApp is not even in my phone now...
As long as you have paging space --- and you almost certainly do --- in general, an OS should page out pages of memory used by software that isn't being frequently used.
It's possible that the program is allocating memory and then keeps hammering it to keep it resident, but most of the time, a program allocating more memory than it absolutely requires isn't honestly that big a deal, because the OS will handle it reasonably and just leave it in the pagefile.
I don't know what the mechanism is to report this on Windows, but you might try looking in mmc (Windows-R mmc Enter), if that's still a thing in Windows 11, as it has a bunch of process resource usage graphs.
On Linux, you'll probably want to be looking at RSS to find what's actually in physical memory (well, there can be shared memory and some other things, but RSS is probably a reasonably approximation). You can see this in
top.searches
If this is current, Windows probably calls it "Working Set".
The problem with electron apps is that it's not unused or infrequently used memory
Preferred by scammers
The app is always lagging behind the web version too, it's just not worthy it.
What do you mean, the app is the web version now
If that's the case, why not just use webview, instead of packing a whole separate browser?
Obviously not aiming that at you op, but if someone has an insight on this, I'm curious.
Sorry, it was a while ago since I used the app version from the Store.
What is either of these 2 archaic sounding things you speak of?
A great alternative is to create a Matrix account and connect a WhatsApp bridge bot with the WhatsApp account, that way you can use any lightweight Matrix client. (It also works cross-platform)
2nd after Windows.
Windows 11?
I heard it's terrible
Many flavours of Linux
Are comparable
If you want Windows to spy & train on you
Simply open your doors
Let the verified perverts in too
Unused RAM is wasted RAM. This is only a problem if windows doesn’t allocate a large portion of that ram to something else if/when it needs it, which windows does.