A weather app became a browser.

The story reached 357 points and 296 comments on Hacker News when checked. 1

Notebookcheck's Aug. 9 report says Windows 11's Weather app is essentially an MSN Weather web app built on Microsoft's WebView2, rather than a fully native app. It reports more than 1.2 GB while showing a forecast, roughly 500–600 MB when idle, and up to 1.5–1.6 GB during zooming or navigation. On an 8 GB PC, that is nearly one-fifth of system memory. 2

The mechanism is ordinary browser architecture. Microsoft's WebView2 documentation says each control creates a set of browser, renderer, and GPU processes, while memory use also depends on the web content being hosted. 3

That does not mean every PC will feel the same, or that every WebView2 app has one fixed cost. It means the label "Weather" hides an implementation choice: a small forecast can carry browser processes, scripts, graphics, and page content. On a low-RAM machine, the extra pressure can spill into the page file and become visible as slower response. 2