Windows 11 Weather app consumes 5x more RAM than macOS equivalent, includes ads
Tests show Microsoft's built-in Weather app uses over 1GB of RAM—20% of an 8GB system—due to its WebView2 architecture, contradicting the company's efficiency promises.
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Summary, timeline and people extracted by Claude from 39 items across 5 sources · 19h ago. Quotes are verbatim.
Windows 11's built-in Weather app consumes more than 1GB of RAM, roughly five times the memory footprint of Apple's native macOS Weather app, according to reports from Windows Latest and Wccftech. The high consumption stems from Weather being a web app built on Microsoft's WebView2 framework rather than a native application, and it includes sponsored advertising. The findings contradict Microsoft's stated commitment to optimizing Windows 11 for lower-end systems with limited RAM.
- Windows 11's built-in Weather app consumes 1.0–1.6GB of RAM, five times more than macOS Weather's ~250MB, due to its WebView2 web-app architecture rather than native implementation.
- On 8GB systems, the Weather app alone can occupy up to 20% of total memory, causing system slowness by forcing Windows to use page files; the app also displays sponsored advertising tiles.
- Microsoft's optimization contradicts public commitments by CEO Rudy Huyn and the company's stated goal of improving Windows 11 efficiency for lower-end hardware.
- The Weather app runs nine separate Chromium subprocesses and is essentially a rebranded MSN web wrapper, highlighting Microsoft's failure to rebuild it as a native application as promised.
How it unfolded
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Reaction Community frustration over Windows advertising
Reddit commenters express broader frustration with Windows 11's ad-heavy approach, questioning whether paid OS should include advertising at all.
“is there anything in Windows 11 that isn't just about showing you ads? i booted it up in a VM just to see and it was just like a constant flashing billboard.”
aquoad · r/technology ↗ -
Reaction Hacker News discussion gains traction
Story reaches Hacker News frontpage with 139 points and 117 comments, amplifying criticism of Microsoft's approach to built-in applications.
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Report Story reaches mainstream tech news
Notebookcheck, omgubuntu.co.uk, and other outlets report on the excessive RAM consumption and Microsoft's apparent contradiction of its efficiency goals.
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Report Wccftech confirms high RAM usage patterns
Independent testing confirms Weather app starts at 1GB, drops to 500–600MB idle, and spikes to 1.5–1.6GB during basic interactions like zooming.
“Just zooming in and out will cause that RAM meter to spike”
Wccftech · Google News ↗ -
Report Windows Latest detailed analysis published
Expanded reporting shows Weather app uses nine separate Chromium subprocesses, includes sponsored tiles disguised as weather cards, and contradicts Microsoft's commitment to native app development.
“Windows 11's Weather app is basically MSN adware wearing a forecast icon, and it uses about five times the RAM of macOS native Weather, all while showing ads on an OS you already paid for.”
Windows Latest reporter · r/technology ↗ -
Report Story spreads across news aggregators
Multiple news outlets including XDA republish the findings, highlighting both the RAM consumption disparity and the presence of ads in the Windows app.
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Report Windows Latest publishes initial findings
Windows Latest reports that Windows 11's Weather app consumes more than 1GB of RAM, five times the memory usage of macOS Weather, and notes it is a WebView2-based web app rather than a native application.
What people are saying verbatim
“Windows 11's Weather app is basically MSN adware wearing a forecast icon, and it uses about five times the RAM of macOS native Weather, all while showing ads on an OS you already paid for.”
Windows Latest reporter, Tech journalist · Windows Latest (posted to reddit) ↗ · Aug 9, 6:56 AM
“Just zooming in and out will cause that RAM meter to spike”
Wccftech, Tech publication · Wccftech ↗ · Aug 9, 7:55 AM
“For systems running 16GB or even 8GB of RAM, running the Weather app can immediately cause unnecessary delay and performance issues because you'll run out of system memory, forcing Windows 11 to begin using the SSD temporarily.”
Wccftech, Tech publication · Wccftech ↗ · Aug 9, 7:55 AM
“is there anything in Windows 11 that isn't just about showing you ads? i booted it up in a VM just to see and it was just like a constant flashing billboard.”
aquoad, reddit user · reddit ↗ · Aug 9, 2:39 PM
“The real issue is the RAM usage”
Windows Latest, Tech journalist · Windows Latest ↗ · Aug 9, 6:56 AM
“Apple's Weather app on macOS is a single native process using 246.7MB of memory. Windows 11's Weather app uses almost five times the RAM for the sole reason that it's a web app.”
Windows Latest, Tech journalist · Windows Latest ↗ · Aug 9, 6:56 AM
“Microsoft has a ton of ground to cover when optimizing Windows 11 for 8GB RAM systems, a promise that the company has currently failed to deliver, as evidenced by the app.”
Wccftech, Tech publication · Wccftech ↗ · Aug 9, 7:55 AM
Voices from the web unedited
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Windows 11 built-in weather app eats more than 1.2 GB of memory just to tell you if it is going to rain or hot today. Hah. Linux and Unix users just type: curl wttr.in curl wttr.in/city_name_here curl wttr.in/nyc curl wttr.in/moon curl wttr.in/london https://www. windowslatest.com/2026/08/09/w…
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Putting aside the fact that it is horribly bloated. Accurately measuring RAM usage is tricky, there are several measurements, and no "right" one.It is clear from the article that what eats up so much RAM is not the weather app itself but the framework it runs on. There is a "Renderer", a "GPU Process",... eating most of it.The thing that the task…
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Roughly zillions of people use trash like Alexa. Its still infinitely better and more accurate to just go to a website yourself. Its cool you like terrible weather apps that are usually wrong because it proves you're hip or whatever you tell yourself, but some people prefer the options that are superior in every way except benefitting laziness…
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Shame, because it's genuinely a great map - ahem, optimizations aside.I remember giving the app a second chance - after assuming it to be bloatware next to all the other default apps that came with Windows - but after seeing it redeem itself in benchmarks[1], I gave it a shot and quite like it. The iOS app was too rubbish to bother with…
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I used to be like that but you have to give them some leeway, not having administrator access is enough limits for the majority of things but I do lock down a bunch of web browser settings to stop all the random BS popups they give you about setting default browser, signing into the browser and importing data from other browsers.
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As time goes on, I become more and more convinced that OSes need some sort of OS level GC pool which all GCed languages play in rather than having the language runtime provide the GC.A major part of why these sort of simple applications are taking gbs of memory is because the GC wants to simply grow as much as it can to avoid pauses/jank. There…
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yeah it really sucks. I keep 4 folders (communication, health apps, games, misc, and camera in the center) on the bottom toolbar and just collect my most used apps in there, rest are in the drawer. That handles all my daily interactions.
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Easy workaround for this:1. Install uBlock Origin in Edge.2. Start Edge, browse to MSN Weather.3. Click the "Add an Application" button in the address bar to get a Start Menu icon for the page.4. Delete the in-box Weather app icon.Now you get the same Weather app in about 130MB of RAM, with no ads. It's not as nice as a native app, of course, but…
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is there anything in Windows 11 that isn't just about showing you ads? i booted it up in a VM just to see and it was just like a constant flashing billboard. I mean, after it took an astonishingly long time to even start up.
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This reminds me of the JetBrains Toolbox App, which is a tray/system utility used to keep IDE:s up-to-date and provide a good location to launch them from. Not much more than that. https://www.jetbrains.com/toolbox-app/It is currently using 680 MiB RAM on Mac OS 26.6, this is more than Microsoft Teams is using on my system. How do a group of what…