According to Windows Latest, the default weather application in Windows 11 can consume more than 1 GB of RAM just by displaying the weather forecast. When the Weather application is open, it uses nearly 1.2 GB of RAM, even without any scrolling, clicking, or other interactions. By default, Windows 11 uses the "MSN Weather" application, which not only uses a significant amount of RAM but also displays ads. For an operating system that costs real money, having ads in a Microsoft-owned weather app, for which you paid a licensing fee, is a disappointing experience.

Last week, Microsoft removed documentation from its website and materials that recommended 32 GB of RAM for new PC builds or purchases. The company now emphasizes that 8 GB devices are optimized to run Windows 11 smoothly. However, with an 8 GB RAM configuration, the weather application alone consumes about 15% of the available RAM. This is before any other services start running or daily tasks begin. Below screenshots are taken by the Windows Latest team.

In comparison, the default weather application in Apple's mac OS is about five times less resource-hungry than the Windows version. Additionally, only the Windows 11 app displays ads, while the mac OS application remains ad-free. Microsoft has committed to optimizing the Windows 11 experience, but small areas like this are also important. We hope the company can allocate more resources to optimize the weather app and other built-in default applications to be less resource-intensive and ad-free on the operating system you paid for.