Office apps using high memory utilization due WebView2 on W11 devices

Ritesh Sharma 371 Reputation points

We have notice office apps (Teams, Outlook) using high memory utilization due to WebView2 in W11 devices. It is some time impacting the device performance.

is there a way to mitigate or reduce the memory utilization due to WebView2.

  1. Jaap Smit 35 Reputation points

    Version 128.0.2739.67 is very hungry on my system (win11) and per active session/screen in Teams it consumed up to 350 MB of available RAM. It added up to more than 2 GB! My modern i7 Workstation with 32Gigs of RAM started memory paging! Why is the OS not limiting this beast? I don't know. With some freeware tools I deleted all forms of cached info in the OS (I did not know the origin of this memory hogging process) and now, after clearing all possible cache options (in all the browsers, and on standard OS related cache/tmp folders. The total used memory of all WebView2 tasks is under 0,5GB again. My workstation stopped memory paging.

    Microsoft Engineers should solve these problems, not end-users!

  2. Eric Linder 15 Reputation points

    We have an issue with WebView2 using over 2GB of memory when used by an Excel Add-In we developed. So, yes, you could close all Add-Ins that might use WebView2 OR, here's an idea Microsoft, maybe you fix WebView2 so that it doesn't massively leak memory under normal Add-In use cases. As developers we can't fix this over usage of memory by WebView2 used in Add-Ins. Contact me if you want more info.

  3. Lutz Heinrichs 0 Reputation points

    When Outlook 365 (New) was at 2GB memory usage (according to Task Manager), I got a Windows notification stating that Memory Usage for Outlook was high, and that I should restart it. So this is captured in telemetry.

    I just let it go to see how high it would climb. It peaked at 14GB after eating blocks of about 8 MB per second. Then, Windows suspended the process and it silently exited without any notification.

    All I did was start it and read two emails that had links in them, which I clicked to open them in Firefox.

    I then started Outlook again, tried to follow the same steps, but this time did not observe that memory leak.

    I am not aware of any add-ons; I am not actively using any that aren't on by default.

    Outlook version:

    You have Microsoft Outlook Version 1.2024.1002.100 (Production).

    Client Version is 20241004002.11.

    WebView2 Version is 129.0.2792.79.

    Session ID is c6edf564-a884-f94f-8041-811e1be94d9d.

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1 answer

  1. Jing Zhou 7,805 Reputation points β€’ Microsoft External Staff

    Hi Ritesh,

    You can try the following methods to alleviate or reduce memory utilization caused by WebView2:

    Update to the latest version: Ensure that the WebView2 controls and Office applications you are using are the latest version. New versions usually fix performance issues and memory leaks in previous versions.

    Clear cache: WebView2 uses cache to accelerate page loading, but excessive cache may consume a lot of memory. Attempting to clear the cache of WebView2 can reduce memory utilization to some extent.

    Disable unnecessary features: Some Office applications may use WebView2 to present specific features or content. You can try disabling these features to reduce the use of WebView2, such as disabling certain Outlook plugins or features.

    Restrict simultaneous opening of tabs or windows: WebView2 may consume more memory when loading multiple tabs or windows. Try limiting the number of tabs or windows that can be opened simultaneously to reduce memory usage.

    Optimize resource usage: If possible, try optimizing the resources used by WebView2, such as using lighter pages or applications, reducing embedded scripts or large media content, etc.

    Monitor memory usage: Use Windows Task Manager or other system monitoring tools to monitor the memory usage of Office applications, determine when memory utilization increases, and attempt to identify specific actions or scenarios that cause an increase in memory usage.

    By using the above methods, you can try to alleviate or reduce the memory utilization caused by WebView2, thereby improving the performance of Office applications.

    Please let me know if you have any other questions.

    Best regards，

    Jill Zhou

    1. Jim Hessenauer 25 Reputation points

      Most of these solutions seem to be, don't use the product so much. How is that a solution? Outlook is slow, don't use any plugins. Edge is slow, only load one website at a time and make sure it's not embedded with scripts. Teams is slow, just walk over to your co-workers desk.

    2. Anonymous

      Be carefull when clearing all the cached info of Webview2 processes. Make sure! that all your OneDrive synchronized content is "free of errors & frree of warnings". I cleared my cache (of all the webview2 processes) and was confronted with loss of data. Some files, that I edited from a local OneDrive copy, were in this cache-list. The changes (an afternoon of worktime) was lost, but clearing this Webview2 cache got my machine working normally again. The root for my problems I did not discover, but the workstation slowly but surely got bogged down by an ever increasing memory consumption with Webview2 instances.

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