Process "Steam Client WebHelper" hogging CPU

[McChicken]

Occasionally during games this process "Steam Client WebHelper" will start using lots of CPU and memory and causing my game to lag. I've caught it spiking at up to 70% of my CPU usage in the past. Today it was around 30% and using over 2GB of memory while I was playing TF2. I think I've mostly had this issue while playing TF2, but TF2 is the game I play the most so it could just be a coincidence.

I've seen other people having this problem but I couldn't find a definite solution. How can I fix this, if possible?

[McChicken]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย EvilSeeQu:

Sort of had the same issue, where steam webhelper hogged about 20 - 30% cpu, from a Ryzen 7 5800X, along with microsoft defender hogging another 20 - 30% when Steam was running, and stopped as soon as i killed Steam.
Along with just white pages in steam, regardless what tab i go to (Library, Store etc) and some other issues across other softwares like Chrome and MS Teams.

The problem was solved by uninstalling the latest windows update for me.
(If anyone would like to try, heres a short how-to)

Go to Start > Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update > View update history > Uninstall Updates.

Then sort the updates by installation date, and uninstall the latest one (or the last two).
Restart will be required, and after you're done; hopefully the Steam WebHelper crap is fixed again.

I've been having this issue throughout several Windows updates... I don't remember if it started after a certain update or if it's just always been an issue for as long as I've had my PC (over a year at least). Also wow this thread blew up lol. Since so many people are having a similar issue it must be at least partially Valve's fault right? Hopefully they fix it at some point.

[EvilSeeQu]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย >__<:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย EvilSeeQu:

Sort of had the same issue, where steam webhelper hogged about 20 - 30% cpu, from a Ryzen 7 5800X, along with microsoft defender hogging another 20 - 30% when Steam was running, and stopped as soon as i killed Steam.
Along with just white pages in steam, regardless what tab i go to (Library, Store etc) and some other issues across other softwares like Chrome and MS Teams.

The problem was solved by uninstalling the latest windows update for me.
(If anyone would like to try, heres a short how-to)

Go to Start > Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update > View update history > Uninstall Updates.

Then sort the updates by installation date, and uninstall the latest one (or the last two).
Restart will be required, and after you're done; hopefully the Steam WebHelper crap is fixed again.

Do you know what the update is called that you went back to? I'm not sure how many updates it's been since I've had this issue... I do not want to uninstall too many updates and be left with more issues than I started with.

Im currently on Windows 10 Pro, 20H2 build 19042.928 (KB5001330),
To be fair, if you aren't sure, just try to temporarly fully disable any firewall / Windows Defender, and see if the problem still persists.
If it does, downgrade by uninstalling the latest installed update.

Also, it doesnt matter really if you uninstall a wrong version, windows will prompt you to update again, which you can and should do, as its a potential risk to run outdated systems.

Might also be related to the removal of MS edge legacy desktop application that reached EOL in March.

Have a read at Microsoft 365 Blog here.[techcommunity.microsoft.com]

[relliK]

as a workaround you should lookup the Steam -no-browser command line option.

without the browser component (steam web helper) you should not only have less cpu utilization but also way less memory consumption... ofc there are some drawbacks but especially when you have a weaker system (like me ><) you may want to give it a try.

https://www.howtogeek.com/694531/how-to-reduce-steams-ram-usage-from-400-mb-to-60-mb/

[pwdbyEXT]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย relliK:

As a workaround you should lookup the Steam -no-browser command line option.

Adding this to the Target field in the Steam shortcut does the job for now.
It stops the SteamNetworkingSockets lock held for Xms. (Performance warning) errors I get in the CSGO console. They appear to be directly related to the WebHelper CPU spikes.
I had actually submitted a support ticket several days ago with a screenshot of WebHelper using 75% of my cpu in idle. All they could suggest was to enable Low Performance/Bandwidth mode in Steam's Library tab settings, but it does nothing.

[McChicken]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย relliK:

as a workaround you should lookup the Steam -no-browser command line option.

without the browser component (steam web helper) you should not only have less cpu utilization but also way less memory consumption... ofc there are some drawbacks but especially when you have a weaker system (like me ><) you may want to give it a try.

https://www.howtogeek.com/694531/how-to-reduce-steams-ram-usage-from-400-mb-to-60-mb/

Thanks a lot! This does seem to help.

[iwsfg]

Also noticed this. (My CPU is FX-8350, OS is Windows 10)

One of the instances of steamwebhelper.exe was eating 15% CPU while idling. I also have an instance of Chrome running with some 400 tabs in it and there isn't a chrome process that would utilize more than 2.4%.

Both have been running for 2.5 weeks since last reboot.

After restarting Steam client and clicking around the library, friends and store tab I don't see it consuming more than 8% when calculating grid layout for user generated content at the bottom of detailed view for the game in Steam Library and once I leave it be it goes down to nearly 0.

I can't imagine what's being executed there for a constant 15% CPU usage. Either something fishy is going on in CEF if it's customized in some way or in the javascript that's being executed and perhaps never unloaded (I suspect that library or friends UI may remain in memory at all times). As kids say these days, "it's sus"

[ETMA]

I have the same issue and it causes the entire pc to freeze for a sec or two (i9 9900k).

But what to expect from a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ company that can't code to save their life..

[him]

the steam client just normally eatting my 5gb out of 8gb ram

[LiterallyDas]

A quick addon to here for anyone still looking for a solution in recent years ;;

I've found that simply closing the steam friends list when in the overlay gets rid of the Steam Webhelper process in the taskmanager.

[zebbedaja]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย LiterallyDas:

A quick addon to here for anyone still looking for a solution in recent years ;;

I've found that simply closing the steam friends list when in the overlay gets rid of the Steam Webhelper process in the taskmanager.

I can confirm that this solution is working. It helped me getting rid of the high CPU usage, thank you!

[McChicken]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย LiterallyDas:

A quick addon to here for anyone still looking for a solution in recent years ;;

I've found that simply closing the steam friends list when in the overlay gets rid of the Steam Webhelper process in the taskmanager.

Thank you so much! Far easier than starting Steam with -no-browser. I'm surprised no one found this earlier haha

EDIT: I still get spikes of CPU usage and the webhelper process is still there in task manager. It's better than it was before but seemingly not a complete fix, at least for my system.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Do you get fewer steamwebhelper.exe processes or none of them at all, when you close the friends list in the overlay?

I was under the impression that Steam spawns some steamwebhelper.exe processes outside of just needing them to run the Friends list.

[LiterallyDas]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Orangey:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย LiterallyDas:

A quick addon to here for anyone still looking for a solution in recent years ;;

I've found that simply closing the steam friends list when in the overlay gets rid of the Steam Webhelper process in the taskmanager.

Thank you so much! Far easier than starting Steam with -no-browser. I'm surprised no one found this earlier haha

EDIT: I still get spikes of CPU usage and the webhelper process is still there in task manager. It's better than it was before but seemingly not a complete fix, at least for my system.

I simply check task manager whenever i notice a lag spike for my game ; this is both a temporary solution and also a quite strenuous one. If i find something better then i'll update this discussion :p

[LiterallyDas]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Quint the Alligator Snapper:

Do you get fewer steamwebhelper.exe processes or none of them at all, when you close the friends list in the overlay?

I was under the impression that Steam spawns some steamwebhelper.exe processes outside of just needing them to run the Friends list.

There's a single process that eats up about 20-30% of my CPU usage aside from the game running, other than which there are about 3-4 running through the "steam" app which don't really affect your ram/CPU.
This is from what i've seen so take it with a grain of salt :p

[Corwin]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย LiterallyDas:

A quick addon to here for anyone still looking for a solution in recent years ;;

I've found that simply closing the steam friends list when in the overlay gets rid of the Steam Webhelper process in the taskmanager.

For me personally, turning off animated avatars in the friends list helped.