August 11, 2026, 4:27 pm | Read time: 2 minutes
A quick look at the weather forecast should hardly strain the computer. Yet, the pre-installed Weather app on Windows 11 is currently consuming so much memory that older PCs can noticeably slow down.
A Lot of Memory for a Simple Task
The task of the Windows 11 Weather app seems straightforward: display temperatures, calculate precipitation probabilities, and present weather data clearly. It’s surprising how many system resources the app requires during operation, as “Windows Latest” has discovered.
Measurements show that the app can sometimes occupy more than 1.2 gigabytes of memory. In peak instances, around 1.6 gigabytes of RAM were recorded. Although the usage decreases after a while, several hundred megabytes often remain in memory. On high-performance PCs, this is hardly noticeable. However, on devices with limited capabilities, it can become a problem.
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The Weather App Operates in the Background
The unusually high resource consumption is apparently due to the app’s architecture. The Weather app is not a traditional Windows application but relies on Microsoft’s WebView2 technology. This allows web content to be displayed directly within programs.
As a result, several processes run in the background based on the Chromium engine. The same technology is used in browsers like Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge. For Microsoft, this offers advantages in developing and updating content. However, it also increases resource demand. For an app whose main task is to display weather information, a memory consumption of well over a gigabyte seems unusually high.
Users of Older PCs Especially Feel the Effects
Especially computers with 8 gigabytes of memory, which are still widespread, can suffer from the high RAM demand. If the Weather app already consumes a large portion of the available resources, there is less room for other applications.
When memory runs low, Windows shifts data to the SSD. This swapping process can noticeably slow down programs, especially when multiple applications are open simultaneously. To save memory, users should fully close the Weather app after use or limit its background activities. For many users, a quick glance in a browser may ultimately suffice instead of running another app in the background continuously.