IT News on October 5th: As memory costs continue to rise, Microsoft is listing "reducing Windows memory usage" as one of the key tasks for the remainder of 2026.
Microsoft's Windows and the person in charge of its device business, Pawan Dawuluri ( Pavan Davuluri ), stated in the official podcast " Inside Windows " that the rising cost of memory has become an issue that the entire PC industry is paying attention to. The Windows team is working to improve memory utilization at multiple levels, from the system's underlying foundation to the application framework.
This topic originated from a question posed by a user with the ID Surface Pro in Inside Windows. The user mentioned that in order to run a local AI model on their device, they had to disable some client-side AI functions, and therefore hoped that Microsoft would further improve the memory management of Windows.
Davuluri stated that memory issues are currently "of great concern within the industry," especially against the backdrop of continuously rising computer memory costs. For the Windows team, it is necessary to further improve memory utilization efficiency and carry out related work around this goal.
Microsoft previously listed "memory optimization for devices with 8GB and above" as one of the key directions for future improvements in its Windows quality improvement updates, which were announced on July 31. The goal is to reduce the memory footprint of Windows and ensure that PC performs faster and more smoothly in daily use. Microsoft also stated that progress has been made in related memory efficiency improvements and that these efforts will continue throughout the remainder of 2026.
From the information currently released by Microsoft, it is not just a simple addition of a "memory cleanup" feature; rather, it involves multiple underlying components and application frameworks of Windows.
Davuluri mentioned that the team is working on improving the Windows memory manager, the memory compression mechanism, as well as the framework running on top of Windows, with the aim of reducing unnecessary memory consumption at both the system and application levels.
Microsoft has previously begun to advance related technical adjustments. An official announcement on July 31st indicated that Windows is adopting a more efficient memory allocator to reduce additional overhead for applications and system components, while continuing to optimize WinUI3, allowing applications built on this framework to run with lower memory consumption; at the same time, efficiency optimizations are also being made to the Chromium and WebView2 components.
Microsoft's Vice President of Design and Research, Marcus Ash, also revealed that teams such as those responsible for Mini Programs and File Explorer are analyzing resource consumption based on specific usage scenarios. This means they observe the memory footprint incurred when users actually use a particular feature and then optimize it for those specific scenarios. These improvements are not limited to the Windows core components but also cover built-in system functions.
At the same time, Microsoft hopes to further reduce unnecessary permanent resource consumption. Dabuluri previously emphasized that Windows needs to make more rational use of memory resources, loading the corresponding resources only when truly needed, rather than keeping all capabilities in a state of high resource consumption for long periods. For the AI function, Microsoft is also promoting a more explicit control method, allowing users to decide which AI capabilities to enable and when to run them.
For devices with 8GB of memory PC, this optimization is particularly noteworthy. Previously, in March 2026, Microsoft proposed a plan to reduce the basic memory footprint Windows, and on July 31st, it officially included "memory optimization for devices with 8GB or more" as a key focus for future efforts. Microsoft has not yet announced a specific target for reducing memory usage, so it is currently impossible to determine exactly how much RAM will be freed up in the end.
According to feedback from community users, under the same configuration settings, upgrading from the Windows 11 25H2 system to the 26H2 version results in a reduction of memory usage by about 1.5GB to 2GB. Based on the information currently available, these optimizations have been gradually implemented in some versions of Windows Insider, and will continue to be expanded in subsequent updates of Windows. IT will continue to monitor these developments.
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"User feedback: After upgrading to Microsoft Win11 26H2, memory usage has decreased by about 1.5~2GB"
