Windows 11’s Weather app uses 1GB RAM

I thought this was an interesting article.

According to a recent piece from OMG Ubuntu, the built-in Windows 11 Weather app routinely consumes between 900MB and 1.1GB of RAM. To put that in perspective, displaying a basic forecast takes up roughly a quarter of the 4GB minimum memory requirement to run Windows 11 (though I doubt anyone is actually running Windows 11 on just 4GB).

The reason for this bloat comes down to how Microsoft built it. Instead of creating a lightweight native app, they opted for a web page running on their WebView2 engine (which uses Edge/Chromium under the hood) packed with ads and sponsored content. Essentially, you are launching a mini browser tab every time you check the temperature.

Compare this to other operating systems:

macOS: Apple’s Weather app sits between 90MB and 250MB.

Linux: GNOME Weather runs on just 160MB to 290MB.

If you are on a high-end PC with 32GB of RAM, you won’t even notice the overhead. But if you are using a budget laptop with 4GB or 8GB, opening something as simple as the weather could force your computer to start compressing memory and swapping files, which would visibly slow down the whole machine. Given the current RAM shortage, I think we’ll likely see Microsoft rethink its approach to how Windows widgets operate.

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/08/linux-vs-windows-weather-app-ram