Windows 11's Weather app uses over 1 GB of RAM because it's just a browser wrapper

The Windows 11 Weather app is not a native application — it is a WebView2 wrapper around MSN's weather website. At launch it consumes around 1.2 GB of RAM, climbing to 1.5–1.6 GB during basic interactions like zooming. It spawns nine Chromium-based subprocesses to display a forecast, which explains the high memory footprint. By comparison, macOS's native Weather app uses around 247 MB under similar conditions. Developers building Windows apps who want to avoid this pattern track WebView2 vs. native trade-offs on daily.dev.

The Windows 11 Weather app uses roughly 1.2–1.6 GB of RAM, while Apple's macOS Weather app uses around 247 MB under similar conditions — approximately five times less. The difference comes down to implementation: the Windows version is a WebView2/Chromium wrapper around a website, while the macOS version is a native application. Teams deciding between WebView wrappers and native implementations find real-world comparisons like this on daily.dev.