Did Microsoft not hear about the RAM crisis? Windows 11's new Copilot app is quite the memory hog | Tech Radar
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Did Microsoft not hear about the RAM crisis? Windows 11's new Copilot app is quite the memory hog
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It's no longer native software, but a web app implemented via Edge
Due to this browser-based form, its RAM usage is high, as a tech site discovered with its testing
Windows 11's Copilot app is something of a shapeshifter, having taken on many forms at this point — and its latest incarnation seems to be an unfortunate memory hog.
Windows Latest points out that the new Copilot app, which replaces the previous native app (that used the Win UI framework), is essentially built on Edge. What you're getting here is a kind of hybrid web app that runs on a spun-off version of Microsoft's web browser.
In practice, this means the new Copilot looks and behaves very much the same as the web version of the AI, and this isn't necessarily a bad thing in some ways. As Windows Latest observes, the new Copilot runs smoothly and feels pretty much like it's a native app. It also has all the latest features as deployed in the web-based assistant.
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The catch is that behind the scenes it's consuming quite a lot of resources. According to the tech site, the new Copilot app can use up to 500MB of RAM when simply running in the background, with that spiking to around 1GB when you're actually using the AI assistant.
The reason why Copilot is chomping a lot more RAM is because, as noted, the app now works via its own fork of Edge — it's like running Copilot in its own little browser window. And in a time where memory is very expensive, and the average PC owner is becoming more worried about RAM demands — and maybe trying to run Windows 11 on 8GB – this feels like a bit of a slap in the face.
It also seems like Microsoft is taking something of a shortcut here. Sure, Copilot appears to work well enough in this new form, and it's also easy for Microsoft to keep it up to speed with any new features — doing that is harder work with a native app (and updates are applied much less regularly). However, just making the app an instance of Edge feels like a fudge more than anything.
Further consider Microsoft's recent promise to fix everything that's wrong with Windows 11, including honing performance and reducing RAM usage — which this new move appears to fly directly in the face of.
It's a somewhat confusing turn of events, then, although perhaps the direction the AI assistant has now taken may reflect the desires of the Copilot team, as opposed to the core Windows team – but that is, of course, just speculation.
The progress of the Copilot app in Windows 11 has been weird all along, though, right from when it was first unchained from its original (native) side-panel incarnation. After that happened, Copilot became a PWA (web app), and then eventually the AI became a native app again — and it's now gone back to a (different) web form.
Scratching your head at all this? You're not alone, and the new memory drain that's evident with the app hasn't gone down well in the prevailing RAM crisis climate. As one Redditor put it: "Copilot went from a lightweight assistant to basically a hidden Edge browser eating up RAM. Cool tech, but terrible for performance conscious users."
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Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for Tech Radar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).
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Did Microsoft not hear about the RAM crisis
