WhatsApp for Windows Hits 1.5GB RAM in Test Despite Microsoft’s Memory Improvement Claim

The test comes from Windows Latest. After installing a fresh Microsoft Store update for WhatsApp, the outlet reported that the app still used 562MB before login and 1.5GB while scrolling. That's a hard result to square with Microsoft featuring WhatsApp as a success story in a post about making 8GB PCs feel faster.

What Microsoft said​

On November 3, Microsoft published "Raising the bar for 8 GB Windows 11 PCs: what's improved and how to get it," written by Pavan Davuluri, executive vice president of Windows + Devices. Most of the post covers Windows memory management and Microsoft's own apps. One sentence covers third-party apps: platform improvements are helping outside developers too, and "WhatsApp is seeing double digit memory improvement in their Windows app."

That's the only WhatsApp-specific claim in the post. Several key details are missing:

• No unit. "Double digit" could mean a percentage or megabytes.
• No baseline. There's no "before" figure.
• No workload. We don't know if this was idle, active chatting, media scrolling or calls.
• No version information. No WhatsApp build, Windows build or WebView2 runtime is named.

Windows Latest noted the same gap: Microsoft doesn't share WhatsApp's old RAM usage, the new figure, or whether they measured idle, scrolling or calls. The blog links the phrase "Windows app" to WhatsApp's Microsoft Store listing.

Section summary: Microsoft made an app-specific memory claim with no numbers attached, so readers have nothing to check it against.

What the 8GB blog actually measured​

The rest of the post is far more specific, which makes the WhatsApp line stand out. Its main figures, all from Microsoft's own blog and footnotes:

The 900MB figure is not a WhatsApp number. Windows Latest says so directly: the post claims up to 900MB less committed memory growth in multitasking tests on 8GB PCs, but all those improvements are in Windows, Edge, and Microsoft 365 apps. In Microsoft's own footnote, that test covered Edge, Office, Outlook and Teams. WhatsApp wasn't part of it.

Microsoft's upgrade instructions are clear. To get the improvements, install Windows 11 version 26H2, build 26300.9818 or later:

1. Open Settings > Windows Update.
2. Turn on Get the latest updates as soon as they're available.
3. Select Check for updates.
4. Keep Microsoft Edge, Microsoft 365 and Teams updated too, because Microsoft says some improvements arrive through app updates or the Microsoft Store.

Nothing in that guidance promises a specific WhatsApp memory reduction.

Section summary: Microsoft's own numbers come with footnotes and defined scenarios. The WhatsApp claim has neither.

What Windows Latest measured​

Windows Latest's Abhijith M B reinstalled WhatsApp from the Microsoft Store on a Lenovo IdeaPad. The report doesn't give the laptop's exact configuration, RAM, Windows build or WhatsApp version, so these are readings from one session, not a controlled benchmark:

• Before login: On the "Welcome to WhatsApp" screen, the WhatsApp process group, including its WebView2 child processes, showed 562.2MB in Task Manager. The outlet says its November 2025 test showed about 300MB at the same stage.
• Logging in: After the QR code scan, the app showed "Loading your chats" for about 19 seconds. Memory rose from 483.4MB to 716.9MB and CPU use peaked at 23%.
• Chat list loaded, no interaction: about 800MB.
• Opening a chat: above 1GB, with sending messages adding more.
• Slowly scrolling one chat: about 1.5GB.
• Text-only chats: scrolling stayed below 1GB.

There were improvements. A cold start reached the chat list in about six seconds, and the author caught the app idling at 495.2MB, compared to the 600MB or so in our June test. He wondered if that was the improvement Microsoft meant.

Read this one carefully. The author speculates that searching for older messages "would have definitely" reached 2GB, but that wasn't measured in this test. The June and November 2025 comparisons are also not same-device, same-version tests. Still, an idle drop from about 600MB to about 495MB is roughly 17%, which would technically count as "double digit." If so, the improvement is real but small compared with the active-use numbers.

Section summary: The idle figure improved somewhat. Active use, especially in chats full of media, still pushes memory past 1GB.

Why your WhatsApp numbers may differ​

After earlier coverage, some readers said their WhatsApp never went above 700MB. The text-only result points to the likely reason: content matters a lot. Chats full of stickers, GIFs, photos and video previews give the web engine much more to decode and render than plain text does.

This isn't new. When Meta made the switch late last year, coverage on this site noted that memory figures are workload and machine dependent. Some testers saw modest increases, while others saw heavier spikes up to 1–2 GB under media‑heavy workloads.

If you're comparing against your own PC, check these first:

• What you're measuring. Expand the WhatsApp group in Task Manager. The WebView2 child processes count toward the total.
• Chat content. A family group full of GIFs is a very different workload from a text-only work chat.
• Session length. Long-running web apps can build up state over time. Microsoft's WebView2 guidance itself recommends periodic refreshes for long-running pages.
• Edge and WebView2 updates. Earlier coverage here advised users to keep Microsoft Edge and the WebView2 runtime updated — WebView2 receives performance and security patches via Edge updates.

The WebView2 factor​

The bigger issue is architecture. Meta replaced WhatsApp's native UWP/WinUI client with a wrapper in November 2025. The build that first shipped, version 2.2584.3.0, replaces the previously snappy WinUI/UWP client with an app that essentially hosts web.whatsapp.com inside Microsoft's WebView2 runtime. That version number belongs to the original transition, not to the build Windows Latest tested this month.

The early comparisons were stark. In January, Windows Latest reported that the WebView2 app reached a 3GB memory consumption during peak activity, while the old one rarely exceeded the 1GB mark.

Microsoft's WebView2 performance documentation explains the overhead. WebView2 uses Edge's multi-process design, so each control launches its own browser, renderer and GPU processes, and memory use depends on how complex the web content is. The same guide tells developers how to reduce the footprint:

• Reuse a single CoreWebView2Environment across controls instead of creating several.
• Avoid creating unnecessary WebView2 instances.
• Set MemoryUsageTargetLevel to Low on inactive views.
• Call CoreWebView2.TrySuspendAsync() to suspend renderers that won't be used for a while.
• Limit heavy JavaScript and use Edge DevTools' Memory tool to find heap growth, leaked listeners and detached DOM elements.

These are all developer controls, and none of them is a setting you can change. Microsoft can make the runtime and the OS more efficient. Meta decides how WhatsApp's web code behaves inside it. Windows Latest put it bluntly: "all these third-party apps and Microsoft chose the worst of them to feature here".

Section summary: WebView2 adds a baseline cost, but Microsoft's own guidance puts much of the memory tuning on the app developer.

Is Microsoft pushing native apps, or just pointing to WhatsApp?​

Windows Latest frames this as Microsoft wanting native Windows apps while praising a web wrapper. Neither the blog nor the WebView2 documentation shows Microsoft asking Meta to rebuild WhatsApp natively, so that framing is commentary, not established policy. The blog's roadmap does show where Microsoft's priorities are:

• WinUI 3 apps and experiences, including File Explorer, Notepad, Paint and the new Windows search, are being designed to open faster and use less memory.
• Search and Widgets will share one web engine, as will OneDrive and Photos.
• Microsoft says it is "working with third-party app developers" on memory efficiency.

Microsoft's first-party plan, then, is to cut duplicated web runtimes and lean on WinUI. Holding up a third-party WebView2 wrapper as the example of progress is still a fair thing to question.

The Windows Latest piece also includes an anecdote. The author says a friend who runs a clothing business moved her WhatsApp work to a 6GB Android tablet because scrolling on her Windows PC became painful, and now runs a group of more than 1,000 members on Telegram for Windows without problems. It's a telling story, but it's one person's experience, not a test. The same applies to the article's comparisons with Discord's new Rust client and Meta's native Mac app. They help explain the frustration, but they aren't needed to judge Microsoft's claim.

What would settle it​

The disagreement comes down to missing data. To judge the "double digit" claim, readers would need:

1. The unit: percentage or megabytes.
2. Before-and-after figures.
3. The WhatsApp version and the Windows/WebView2 builds.
4. The hardware configuration.
5. A defined workload: idle, a text chat, a media-heavy group, or a call.

Microsoft applied that level of detail to its own apps in the same post. Doing the same for WhatsApp would answer the question either way.

Bottom line​

Microsoft's 8GB work looks substantial. The compression tuning, on-demand Widgets, faster Edge tab sleeping and Microsoft 365 savings come with specific, footnoted claims, and they're worth installing 26H2 build 26300.9818 or later for. The WhatsApp claim is different: it has no unit, baseline or method behind it.

Windows Latest's test, one laptop and one session with its own gaps, found a small idle improvement while media-heavy chats still pushed WhatsApp past 1GB and up to about 1.5GB. If you use WhatsApp on an 8GB PC mostly for photos, stickers and busy group chats, don't expect this update to change much.