Memory ♥♥♥♥? - Steam Web Helper using 6GB of RAM

[Nexie]

I left my PC on over night, went out for the day, and came back to my PC to find my RAM sitting at 75% usage while idle. A single steam web helper process had 6GB reserved.

This new UI isn't just a memory hog - it actively has a memory ♥♥♥♥. I can deal with new visuals. I can put aside my disgust at web-based design infecting the rest of the steam UI. But this is an actual issue, and should have been caught in testing.

Proof:
https://i.imgur.com/Dn6XR91.png

[Stoned-Iguana420]

One thing that has fixed this for me (temporarily) is going to view from steam homepage in the top left and selecting "small mode" now when you open steam it will just pop up your game list not the background stuff have been using way less ram this way and games seem to be running better

[AustrAlien2010]

If you're not doing anything, the RAM usage should not increase AFAIK. But if you check a lot of websites in the client, and load many other things such a big picture mode, and if you do that 10 times in a row, more RAM might become used than necessary, until your restart it.

It's not a traditional memory ♥♥♥♥, because then things would be out of control and crashing in no time.

I understand why you do not like this. Because obviously you want to have your memory available for other things. But it is what it is. And if it requires a restart to lower it's memory usage, then it requires a restart. I often shut down processes manually, if they need to be restarted. Sometimes that's just needed.

It only takes two seconds to restart the process, I suppose... You can lower it's memory usage in a matter of seconds, but you have to do it manually. It's sort of the same as restarting a text editor. You can do that yourself real quick, once it starts to become bulky from loading a lot of images or whatever.

As a PC user you might already be used to that kind of hassle of restarting something sometimes. But it's not needed to restart the entire client, just end the webhelper.exe process that uses so much RAM, and it will reappear in a matter of seconds, but with much lower memory usage.

[Pierce Dalton]

"Steam is the best launcher"

Well, not anymore...

[Myll]

Look, for all the theory-craft on "why" it happens, I can tell you exactly what happened after a 12 hour off period for my desktop PC (not Sleep, it was Shut Down). So I boot up the PC, immediately start the Windows Task Manager, sort by "Name" in top left (best way to isolate the by-name Steam instances) -- and what do you know, I have a total of 9x separate Steam instances running on my PC. 8 of the 9 are "Steam Client Webhelper" instances. Yeah right, some "help" there, that I didn't ask for, didn't need, and hogs resources from the very boot-up of a very capable desktop PC. I hadn't opened anything in Steam, bear in mind.

Again, in the old days - people were fired over this level of coding incompetence, that causes multiple instances inefficiently without any user input nor background work that holds any true "help" to the client user. Who's in control of my desktop - me, or Steam? Well hey there Valve, if you don't tighten up here and get your employees to fix this mess, and specifically fix your Client, a lot of us customers aren't going to allow you to have any control, any longer (and you won't sell your games much either, when you lose customers).

[改Kai]

Ever thought that maybe all this is intentional? Like Valve and hardware companies (and even microsoft) all work hand in hand. Whenever things like this are done intentionally there's always something going on in the background. Which is why it was done and nothing is being done about it. I see it all the time: Devs make decisions that look bad to us but behind closed doors, it's filling their pockets in some way.

[AustrAlien2010]

No. It just wasn't done yet.
If all is well, the current Steam version does not take so much memory anymore. But it can still eat a lot of RAM, when a lot of data becomes cached. Just not such an unnecessary amount anymore when switching between big picture mode and normal mode.

[war4peace]

Diposting pertama kali oleh AustrAlien2010:

If you're not doing anything, the RAM usage should not increase AFAIK. But if you check a lot of websites in the client, and load many other things such a big picture mode, and if you do that 10 times in a row, more RAM might become used than necessary, until your restart it.

It's not a traditional memory ♥♥♥♥, because then things would be out of control and crashing in no time.

1. In my case, Steam auto-starts at boot and I never open it, or use it in any way, nor do I play Steam games, yet the Webhelper process slowly inflates. I can't emphasize this enough: the only thing Steam does on my PC is start at boot-up. Note: of course I sometimes play Steam games, but that is a separate thing. Webhelper leaks RAM regardless.
2. There is no such thing as a "traditional" memory ♥♥♥♥. A memory ♥♥♥♥ could be slow or fast, it's still a memory ♥♥♥♥. A very short description is: software which requests RAM but does not free it properly when no longer needed.

With that being said, it's been a while since I last experienced this particular issue. I am not sure whether an update fixed it, or something else happened, fact of the matter is I am no longer experiencing it.

[lsdninja]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Tactiqs:

Ever thought that maybe all this is intentional? Like Valve and hardware companies (and even microsoft) all work hand in hand. Whenever things like this are done intentionally there's always something going on in the background. Which is why it was done and nothing is being done about it. I see it all the time: Devs make decisions that look bad to us but behind closed doors, it's filling their pockets in some way.

Hanlon’s Razor.

[zand]

I found that when I leave steam running with no windows open, I come back to find that the system is really slow, at 100% CPU usage and I am unable to start games or other applications due to their being no free memory. Killing steam frees up 62 GB of ram and drops CPU usage to 2%. This does not happen when steam is not running.

[Steven Seagull]

Diposting pertama kali oleh zand:

I found that when I leave steam running with no windows open, I come back to find that the system is really slow, at 100% CPU usage and I am unable to start games or other applications due to their being no free memory. Killing steam frees up 62 GB of ram and drops CPU usage to 2%. This does not happen when steam is not running.

64 gigs? wow

[randomnamer]

Diposting pertama kali oleh AustrAlien2010:

If it's a memory ♥♥♥♥, it would cause the computer to experience issues and maybe crash. Is that also happening? Or is it an observation that your memory is used, but not causing any real issues?

I understand why you say this cuz I have never experienced a crash or slowdown caused by steamwebhelper.exe, I spot this process every time before it drains my total mem of 64gig. It usually takes a day or two to grow to >10GB memory usage before I manually restart steam client. However not everyone has a lot of free memory (64gig is the most you should get if you want optimized performance, for now) or regularly checks the task manager to remedy this bug created by valve developers, and the responsibility is theirs to resolve, not users.

[⍦]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Psycho:

it was 14 GB ram usage for me....

Same for me

[( ( < < <🤖> > > ) )]

I want the option to choose limits on how much ram steam can use...

this would be the best outcome..

[Thessaly]

I'm really curious if anyone has anyone solutions yet. Steamwebhelper crashes and crashes my games to desktop with it. It then struggles to reset properly and refreshes like 3-6 times crashing constantly as it tries to do whatever it is it's doing before finally righting itself.

I'm fine not viewing the Store, ever, if that's what it takes to remove it from the equation. I don't take kindly to my games crashing for an extended period of time without Valve even acknowledging the problem (thus never fixing it).

[art]

So, I think I might have fixed it?

Settings > Interface > Disable:

1) "GPU accelerated rendering in web views (requires restart)"
2) "Smooth Scrolling in web views (requires restart)"

You don't have to disable these I don't think, but I would recommend it because it was causing a high amount of RAM usage as well:

Settings > Friends & Chat > Disable:

3) "Animated room effects"
4) "Animated Avatars & Animated Avatar Frames in your Friends List and Chat"

As soon as I did all of those things one by one, I saw RAM usage decrease significantly, especially when I disabled 1), 2) and 4).