High memory usage has long been a pain point for Windows 11 users and a key focus area for Microsoft. This change is particularly worth looking forward to for computers with only 8GB of RAM.
The reason Windows 11's memory usage has become a focal point of criticism is largely due to Microsoft's previous design direction, which emphasized full web integration. Many applications were not developed natively but were essentially web pages built using the WebView2 framework, which consumes significant memory.
At the Build conference in June, Microsoft promised changes, committing to a full return to the new WinUI3 framework. While the old WebView2 framework may not be completely phased out, it will no longer be heavily promoted.
In response, Microsoft has promised to make the WinUI framework the core of the Windows 11 system experience, offering a more unified design style, stronger performance, and a smoother user experience.
Over the past few months, Microsoft has gradually released partial framework upgrades for WinUI3. According to Windowslast tonight, Microsoft has introduced a host of new frameworks, including TableView for sorting, filtering, and editing data; native Chart controls for financial dashboards and other visualizations; and InkCanvas and InkToolbar for handwriting and drawing.
These are underlying upgrades, and specific performance improvement data has not yet been seen. Moreover, the upgrade process is not yet complete, so there is no clear data for comparison at this time.
Earlier this month, Windowslast published some test data, summarized by AI as follows:
As can be seen, memory usage for some applications has decreased significantly, dropping from 500-600MB to 100-150MB. Results may vary across different programs, but it is evident that replacing Everythinggj with the native WinUI3 framework will lead to major optimizations in memory usage. Once Microsoft upgrades most applications, we may see a completely new Windows 11.
