- Windows 11 26H2 is reportedly improving RAM consumption
- Some users say that they are seeing memory usage of between 1GB to 3GB less after applying the update
- Others see no change, mind, and we have to be cautious around these reports – although Microsoft is working to optimize RAM use in Windows 11
There’s some evidence emerging that Windows 11’s 26H2 update improves performance for some people, although we need to treat that idea with some caution at this stage.
Wccftech flagged up a post on Reddit where a Window 11 user observed: “Before the [26H2] Update, the On Boot RAM utilization was around 6.9GB (nice!), and after the update it is around 4.8-5GB. I guess there is some RAM utilization improvement after all!”
A number of other Redditors chip in with similar tales, such as: “I looked at mine and it is indeed lower than it used to [be] by around 3GB. Nice.”
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Another user says: “I noticed this as well. RAM utilization went down by about a gigabyte on my machine. Pretty good stuff.”
Wccftech also points to a post on X from SoyITPro whose baseline RAM usage went from 9.1GB to 7.5GB, and again there are several other users who chip in to note that theirs has dropped by 1GB (or slightly more) after installing 26H2.
Before we get carried away with any positivity, though, there are those who’ve installed version 26H2 and are posting to say that there’s no difference with their RAM usage compared to what it was before the update.
Notably some of those who are observing bigger drops in memory usage have larger RAM pools, so that’s something to bear in mind if you have a lean 8GB loadout and are hoping for the best here.
Analysis: caution first
Of course, we need to be very careful about jumping to conclusions based a cluster of posts which are effectively anecdotal observations. And as noted, there’s an equal amount of folks who are saying they don’t see any difference with 26H2.
However, Microsoft let us know that it’s working on making Windows 11 use less RAM at the start of August, so some of that effort may well have made its way into the OS – with installing the 26H2 update acting as a switch to flick that into action for more users. (As I discussed previously, while the 26H2 update doesn’t do much, it will act as a trigger for the rollout of features that haven’t yet reached some PCs).
There’s a comment in the above Reddit thread from a user who notes that after installing 26H2 they find that “File Explorer responds immediately and it doesn’t take its usual 5 seconds to respond” – and again, File Explorer is something that Microsoft has been honing. So, what’s likely happened is that this work has been ushered through by the installation of the 26H2 update, which is why it’s an upgrade worth having. Especially given that Microsoft has been doing a lot to Windows 11 this year as part of the major drive to fix the OS.
I’d still advise waiting a little while on installing version 26H2 of Windows 11, mind, just to see if any bugs are going to come crawling out of the woodwork. However, the upgrade seems clean enough thus far based on the initial lack of any major complaints around glitches.
Finally, as Windows Latest reports, it’s worth noting that Microsoft is also busy shoring up memory issues with WinUI, which is the contemporary framework for the interface of Windows 11. This should help with overall performance not just for the desktop OS itself, but also apps which use WinUI.
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