MS Pushes Native Windows 11 Apps Yet Praises WhatsApp’s Web Wrapper as One Chat Still Uses 1.5GB RAM

MS is now praising WhatsApp for using less memory on Windows 11. In a November 3 blog post about improving performance on PCs with 8GB of RAM, Windows chief Pavan Davuluri said WhatsApp is seeing a “double-digit memory improvement”—one day after our article about WhatsApp exceeding 2GB of RAM went viral. I installed the latest update, and unsurprisingly, WhatsApp used a whopping 562.2MB before I even logged in.

To be fair, the app now starts slightly faster and can idle below 500MB. However, it exceeded 1GB as soon as I opened a chat, while a routine task such as slowly scrolling through messages increased memory usage to approximately 1.5GB. So, what exactly did MS improve?

MS’s “Double-Digit” WhatsApp Improvement Is a Numberless Claim

In the Windows Experience Blog, Davuluri wrote, “Improvements in the platform are also enabling third-party developers to benefit from reduced memory usage. For example, WhatsApp is seeing a double-digit memory improvement in its Windows app.” Of all the third-party apps available, MS chose one of the worst examples to feature.

If MS meant a percentage, the improvement could be 10%, because I observed nothing more than a minor reduction. If it meant megabytes, removing 10MB to 99MB from an app that consumes 1GB within seconds barely makes a difference. MS did not disclose WhatsApp’s previous RAM usage, its current figure, or whether the company measured the app while idling, scrolling, or handling calls. I have been testing all of those scenarios for more than a year.

The post also claims up to 900MB less committed memory growth in multitasking tests on PCs with 8GB of RAM. However, those improvements apply to Windows, Edge, and MS 365 apps—and we genuinely appreciate them.

Yet the word “WhatsApp” links to its MS Store page, as though Windows 11 has no better third-party apps worth highlighting. A WhatsApp endorsement appearing one day after our article went viral is quite a coincidence.

I Updated WhatsApp on Windows 11, and It Still Used More Than 500MB Before Login

I had uninstalled WhatsApp after our previous test, but MS’s claim made me curious. The MS Store had a fresh update waiting, so I gave the app another chance on my Lenovo IdeaPad.

On the “Welcome to WhatsApp” screen, the WhatsApp process group—including all its WebView2 child processes—used 562.2MB. At this point, I had not logged in, there were no messages, and the main interface had not loaded. So, what was consuming all that RAM? Our first test of the new WhatsApp in November 2025 showed approximately 300MB of usage at this stage.

Logging in to WhatsApp teaches the value of patience. After I scanned the QR code, the app remained stuck on “Loading your chats” for approximately 19 seconds. During that time, RAM usage increased from 483.4MB to 716.9MB, while CPU usage reached 23%.

Once the chats loaded, the app hovered around 800MB without any interaction. Opening a chat pushed RAM usage beyond 1GB, sending messages increased it further, and scrolling—a routine daily task—raised usage to approximately 1.5GB. This was only a slow scroll, not an attempt to find a message from several days earlier, which would likely have pushed usage to the 2GB mark.

Fortunately, a cold start is now slightly faster. WhatsApp moved from launch to the chat list in approximately six seconds, which is considered fast by Meta’s standards. I also observed it idling at 495.2MB, compared with roughly 600MB in our June test. Perhaps that is MS’s double-digit improvement.

Interestingly, scrolling through text-only chats kept RAM usage below 1GB. However, how common are purely text-based chats today?

Why Some WhatsApp Users Never See 1GB of RAM Usage

After our previous article, several readers said their WhatsApp memory usage never exceeded 700MB. WhatsApp may not be especially popular in the United States, but where I live—and in many other parts of the world—it is the default way to communicate. Many people I know make WhatsApp calls instead of conventional phone calls, largely out of habit.

Stickers based on movies and animated GIFs are also increasingly common. The app must render all this media, and an ordinary scroll through a typical chat is enough to consume substantial amounts of RAM.

WhatsApp Is Still a WebView2 Wrapper, and MS Knows the Overhead

Meta replaced the native UWP app with a WebView2 wrapper in November 2025. The new app essentially loads web.whatsapp.com inside MS’s browser engine. MS’s WebView2 performance guide states, “Each WebView2 control creates its own set of processes, such as browser, renderer, and GPU.”

The guide also advises developers to share a single environment across WebView2 controls, suspend inactive controls, and limit resource-intensive JavaScript. Responsibility for implementing those recommendations rests with Meta.

MS is doing its part, at least on paper. On July 31, Davuluri said the company was “driving efficiencies across Chromium and WebView2 components when they appear in the operating system.” In August, WebView2 also moved to a two-week release schedule, although that change focused on delivering security fixes more quickly rather than reducing RAM usage.

WhatsApp Pushed a Friend’s Business to an Android Tablet, While Telegram Runs Smoothly on Her PC

A friend of mine started a clothing brand several years ago. Every day, she sent hundreds of dress photos to customers through WhatsApp on her Windows PC. At the time, WhatsApp was a fast and efficient UWP app that comfortably used less than 100MB of RAM.

After the transition to WebView2, she contacted me to ask why WhatsApp had become so slow. All her customers use WhatsApp, so she had to continue using it. However, as her business grew, scrolling became increasingly difficult. She eventually had to purchase an Android tablet solely for WhatsApp. Despite not being a flagship device and having only 6GB of RAM, it runs WhatsApp significantly more smoothly.

She now reaches new customers through Telegram on her Windows PC, where she manages a group with more than 1,000 members and shares hundreds of images. The app does not stutter. Meta is a much larger company than Telegram, so there is no reasonable excuse for this disparity.

MS Should Push Meta to Build a Native WhatsApp App Instead of Celebrating a Web Wrapper

Discord is replacing its Electron app with a Rust client that used just 290.2MB of RAM with two accounts signed in. Meanwhile, Meta continues to provide a native WhatsApp app for Mac, while Windows—with 1.6 billion monthly users—receives little more than a browser packaged as an app.

WinUI has also improved significantly this year. Yet instead of encouraging Meta to adopt it, MS included a link to WhatsApp’s web-based app in a blog post celebrating RAM improvements. That decision is difficult to defend.

WhatsApp remains painfully slow on Windows 11, and praise from MS will not change that. If Meta can build a native app for Mac users, Windows users deserve one as well.

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