According to Windows Latest, popular messaging service WhatsApp is downgrading its Windows 11 app to a WebView2 equivalent in the latest update, switching from a native Windows application to a web wrapper that loads the browser version instead.
As a result, Windows Latest reports that WhatsApp version 2.2584.3.0 can use up to 2 GB of RAM under heavy conditions, which seems like a pretty wild amount of memory usage for what is essentially a chat service with image and video support. The app was originally based around a web wrapper, but switched to a native Windows UWP version several years ago.
The reasons behind this web-based change remain unclear, but by the sounds of it, the Windows 11 WhatsApp, err, app, is about to get a whole lot worse for PC users. I would suggest that you could always buy an extra stick of RAM for your machine to compensate for its memory-gobbling ways, but it's not like that's cheap at the moment, either.
And just to top it all off, Meta already has plans to increase the use of advertising in WhatsApp, which I can't see doing anything other than making the app slower to use. Can we stop making things worse for five minutes, please? It's ruining my chilled out vibes.
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