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?

[LiterallyDas]

Corwin님이 먼저 게시:

LiterallyDas님이 먼저 게시:

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.

Oh that's good to know. Could you also mention how to turn it off specifically?

[Mad Scientist]

Don't know why we're bumping a 1yr thread...

LiterallyDas님이 먼저 게시:

Corwin님이 먼저 게시:

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

Oh that's good to know. Could you also mention how to turn it off specifically?

Top right of "Friends" chat there's a gear icon, click it, scroll down to the last option and turn it to OFF for "Enable animated avatars" etc

[No Name Legion]

my computer goes up to 60% - 80% CPU and memory when i go on to the steam community page

[LiterallyDas]

Mr. Gentlebot님이 먼저 게시:

Don't know why we're bumping a 1yr thread...

LiterallyDas님이 먼저 게시:

Oh that's good to know. Could you also mention how to turn it off specifically?

Top right of "Friends" chat there's a gear icon, click it, scroll down to the last option and turn it to OFF for "Enable animated avatars" etc

i saw this thread looking for help and some other people maybe looking through here as well so i thought, y'know :^) maybe help someone out if i can ^^

[LiterallyDas]

No Name Legion님이 먼저 게시:

my computer goes up to 60% - 80% CPU and memory when i go on to the steam community page

I'd suggest not going to the steam community page from within the game.

[No Name Legion]

LiterallyDas님이 먼저 게시:

No Name Legion님이 먼저 게시:

my computer goes up to 60% - 80% CPU and memory when i go on to the steam community page

I'd suggest not going to the steam community page from within the game.

this isn't in-game, this is on my browser with no other programs open with CPU normally at 10% and memory at around 50%

[ego117]

Also beware: I had Steam crash one night and the Steam web helper got stuck in an infinite loop taking continual screenshots (with non stop sound) whenever I reopened Steam.

Had to CTRL-ALT-DEL to end the Steam web helper task (had high resource use) and restart Steam.

[Comrade Kuritsa]

For those that are experiencing the same issue as all of us here and find this thread, I provide a few notes on my own experience with this accursed malady.

Situation: had two “Steam Helper” threads running and using about 25% CPU even while not actively using Steam; heavy fan use, high temperatures etc.

iMac 15,1 | 4 GHz i7 | 16 GB RAM | AMD M295X

Yes, it’s an old machine, but for the sort of thing I usually play, it is fine — sure, the cogs squeak a bit if I go overboard on the graphics in Total War or M&B, but otherwise it does the job well. In recent times — maybe a few months? — I noticed that the fan runs hard for extended periods and the temperature hits unhappy levels, even when not pushing the machine and just noodling along in a basic game.

It started getting even worse recently, exhibiting the same behaviour others experienced: constant fan and high temperatures, even when Steam is minimised in the dock and not being used at all. At first I thought it was shoddily-coded webpages doing stuff in the background until I pinned it down to Steam — and lo, when I quit the app, the fan immediately drops away and normal service resumes.

- Already had ‘Preferences > In-Game > Enable the Steam overlay while in-game’ unselected.
- Already had the Friends pop-uo inactive, but unselected the ‘Friends > Show Avatars’ option anyway.
- Have now tried turning off the ‘Library > Show game icons in the left column’.
- Have not yet tried selecting the ‘Library > Low Performance Mode’.
- Have not yet tried unselecting the ‘Interface > Enable GPU accelerated rendering in web views’.

In limited testing of having Steam up in the background while doing other tasks, just dropping the library list icons seems … oddly effective: I now have just the one Steam Helper thread and <5% CPU as I type this (YMMV).

I won’t have much opportunity to test across different game-running situations for a while, but I’ll report back if I discover anything significant.

PS: I have no idea if any of this helps with a Windows 10 PC — that wretched thing has the fan running even when I ask it to tell me the time. Why are PCs so damn noisy? Always wheezing gently, like an aged Labrador.

[:::... FulVal85 [LMHT] ...:::]

Try to select "small mode" in view options

[:::... FulVal85 [LMHT] ...:::]

I have the same problem now... after some hours of Steam client usage that file uses 15% of my CPU... and same happen yesterday...

same thing with small mode, so for now we have to disable that process...

I think that is a bug of client, but we have to use steam beta forums

[Steven Seagull]

Huge reduction on CPU usage

Steam > Click the cog at the top right corner of Friend List > Turn off "Enable Animated Avatars & Animated Avatar Frames in your Friends List and Chat"

Worth to try

Steam > Settings > Library > Check "Low Bandwidth Mode" and "Low Merformance Mode"
Steam > Settings > Web Browser > Web browser home page > Set it to "about:blank" (without the quotes)

Might not help at all or make CPU usage even worse

Steam > Settings > Interface > Uncheck "GPU accelerated rendering in web views"

Lower the priority of steamwebhelpers so it won't interfere with your games that much

Create steamprio.bat on your desktop, edit it with notepad, paste the below code and just double click on it manually or add it the the Startup folder so it starts automatically with Windows.

echo off
:start
wmic process where name="steamwebhelper.exe" call setpriority "below normal"
timeout /T 1 /NOBREAK
goto start

Lower the memory usage by limiting the number of steamwebhelpers

Start Steam with the -cef-single-process parameter.

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe" -cef-single-process

WARNING: Avoid opening any other websites than official Steam ones as this parameter will turn off some security hardenings.

Disable steamwebhelper completely

Start Steam with the browser turned off. I created a new shortcut onto my Desktop. Just create a copy of the original Steam shortcut, rename it to Steam Lite and at its properties, add a few parameters, so its Target will look like this:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe" steam://open/minigameslist -console -no-browser

Using the "Console" tab you can uninstall games by using the app_uninstall %appid% command where %appid% is the id for the game. The app id will be visible in the console after you try to uninstall the game the usual way. But since the browser is disabled, the confirmation dialog won't be visible, so you have to use the console.

[RiO]

Steven Seagull님이 먼저 게시:

Lower the memory usage by limiting the number of steamwebhelpers

Start Steam with the -cef-single-process parameter.

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe" -cef-single-process

Friendly warning: do NOT use this!

-cef-single-process forces all webviews into a single process, yes. That means it removes the isolated process protection where each web origin gets its own process.

In effect, the same process that handles rendering the built-in webview UI parts of the Steam Client, such as the library, will also be handling the store front; will also be handling Steam Community; and will also be handling any third-party websites you may open.

This means if any of those websites contain any malicious crafted payload that is capable of using an exploit to execute remote code within the process, it will also be able to see anything Steam related such as session tokens. You will not have a separate sandbox boundary protecting it anymore!

Consider for your own safety that CEF is always lagging behind Chromium itself wrt updates, including security updates, and that Steam in turn can't update until CEF updates as well. I.e. you will always have windows of time where you are unprotected against discovered and potentially disclosed vulnerabilities, where the sandbox can make a difference as a last line of defense.

[Steven Seagull]

RiO님이 먼저 게시:

Steven Seagull님이 먼저 게시:

Lower the memory usage by limiting the number of steamwebhelpers

Start Steam with the -cef-single-process parameter.

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe" -cef-single-process

Friendly warning: do NOT use this!

-cef-single-process forces all webviews into a single process, yes. That means it removes the isolated process protection where each web origin gets its own process.

In effect, the same process that handles rendering the built-in webview UI parts of the Steam Client, such as the library, will also be handling the store front; will also be handling Steam Community; and will also be handling any third-party websites you may open.

This means if any of those websites contain any malicious crafted payload that is capable of using an exploit to execute remote code within the process, it will also be able to see anything Steam related such as session tokens. You will not have a separate sandbox boundary protecting it anymore!

Consider for your own safety that CEF is always lagging behind Chromium itself wrt updates, including security updates, and that Steam in turn can't update until CEF updates as well. I.e. you will always have windows of time where you are unprotected against discovered and potentially disclosed vulnerabilities, where the sandbox can make a difference as a last line of defense.

Or it just means that instead of creating a new CEF web view for every tab on Steam, it will use only one at a time.

EDIT: I've just checked and it does what you say. I opened google.com and Steam community in the browser in new tabs, meanwhile Steam itself had the Steam Market open. It was still just 2 processes (one of them is 4MB, I don't know what it could be but it is there all the time).

[LiterallyDas]

Grand Ayatrollah님이 먼저 게시:

LiterallyDas님이 먼저 게시:

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.

thats not the answer to the thread.

steamwebhelper runs even before you log into steam.

logout of steam, reboot your computer, when your computer is loaded and steam login popup is sitting there in the middle of your screen, check the taskmanager.

its "helping" you without even playing a game. thats something facebook cant even do ;)

May Not be, it was something i tried out that helped me is all. Don't care if it's the correct answer or not, it worked :p

[LiterallyDas]

Grand Ayatrollah님이 먼저 게시:

LiterallyDas님이 먼저 게시:

May Not be, it was something i tried out that helped me is all. Don't care if it's the correct answer or not, it worked :p

help with what? oh ya. hogging cpu. im sure it helps.

but i mean. is steam the new NSA or windows 10? why not turn off when we say turn off? you dont have to keep tabs on us im sure we'll be back we like video games after all

Ought to keep in mind this issue persists mainly only when the steam client is actually functioning and on in processes. When it is off ; It is off.