The Effect of the Chat and Widget Apps on Windows 11

The report comes to us from ghacks, which compiled several sources across the internet about Chat and Widget’s effect on Windows 11. As it turns out, disabling or removing these two apps does make a noticeable improvement in system performance, even if you never use them.

The report begins by covering an article on Ars Technica, claiming that getting rid of the Chat (called “Teams” in the article) and Widget icon from your taskbar can actually save on RAM. This is down to how both of them use Window’s processes to work properly.

When you use either app, Windows 11 fires up a process called WebView2. This process lets these two apps use Edge’s technologies without actually having to open Edge.

So, the solution is just to never open the apps, right? Not so fast:

The article claims that the processes take up a few hundred megabytes of RAM, but the real proof comes from Out of Office Hours, which posted a screenshot showing several WebView2 processes each taking their slice of the RAM pie.

As the report claims, just hiding or removing these icons from the taskbar is enough to prevent them from launching the process by themselves.

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An Unideal Welcome Party for Windows 11 Users

First impressions with a new operating system are vital for building a userbase. People who are displeased with what they see may roll back to the old system, and those who have yet to make the jump may get cold feet the moment the negative feedback rolls in.

As such, it’s a pretty big deal that the default setup for Windows 11 passively hogs your RAM, even if you don’t launch any of the apps that come with it. After all, if Windows 11 performs worse than Windows 10, it’s going to make it difficult for Microsoft to convince people to stick around on the new operating system.

At the same time, it’s not a true Windows launch unless things go a bit awry at the start. Hopefully, these little annoyances will end up being teething issues for Windows 11, and not the norm moving forward.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind (and Memory)

Some of Windows 11’s default apps take a sizable chunk out of your RAM, even if you never boot them up. Fortunately, just hiding them from your taskbar is enough from them latching onto your RAM for no good reason.