How to see what's really using your RAM on Windows

PC slow, and nothing in Task Manager looks big? The hog is probably split into dozens of small pieces. Chrome, Edge and many other apps run every tab, extension and helper as its own process.

Step 1: Add each app up

Get-Process | group Name | select Name, Count, @{n='MB';e={[int](($_.Group | measure WorkingSet64 -Sum).Sum/1MB)}} | sort MB -Descending | select -First 6

Name            Count    MB
chrome             34  2994
svchost            91  1374
Discord             6   812
msedgewebview2     12   760

It groups every process by name, counts them, and adds up their memory. Chrome: 34 pieces, about 3 GB. The totals are rough, because pieces share some memory, but the order is right.

What the names mean

• svchost: many small Windows services. A big total here is normal.
• msedgewebview2: not the Edge browser. It's other apps built on Edge, such as Teams, Widgets and Outlook.
• Memory Compression: Windows squeezing memory to fit more in. Normal.

Step 2: How much is left?

Get-CimInstance Win32_OperatingSystem | % { '{0:N1} GB free of {1:N1} GB' -f ($_.FreePhysicalMemory/1MB), ($_.TotalVisibleMemorySize/1MB) }

1.7 GB free of 15.6 GB

Under about 10% free while you work, the PC starts using the much slower disk instead.

Fix it without closing tabs

• Chrome: Settings > Performance > Memory Saver.
• Edge: Settings > System and performance > Sleeping tabs.

Both park the tabs you aren't using and wake them when you click.

On a Mac

Open Terminal and type top -o mem to sort by memory (press q to quit), or open Activity Monitor > Memory.

More quick tips

• Close every frozen app at once
• See what a background process is really doing
• Find gigabytes of junk hiding in your Temp folder
• All terminal tips and tricks