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No its Steam using Chromium and its an automated function.
Steam top left>settings>Interface >Untick >Enable gpu accelerated renderring in web views.
The stutter at scheduled intervals you're experiencing is probably from something else you have running such as an Anti-Virus or Windows Security features scanning, an email client you're scanning for new messages, OneDrive updating or backing up files, Discord... (as examples).
@Reboot: Gave that a try, and this worked.
@Jaunitta: This worked perfectly.
Thank you to you both!
If you're still having the stutter now and then do check your security features. You don't have to turn it off you can tell Windows Security features to ignore specific applications like your games by setting exclusions. Setting exclusions leaves protection on but stops security features from causing issues with games like you're experiencing.
sorry to drag this up.
start PC, not started any games, just standard windows desktop with task manager running.
i got (at present time) 8 Steam Client WebHelper runing using 250MB of memory, 1% of CPU time, and Disk activity keeps showing action.
What is this doing?
Why is it running?
ok ask another way, i do not have Excel running 250mb in the background.
i do not have Explorer running 250mb in the background.
i do not have microsoft solitaire running 250mb in the background.
so why Steam Client WebHelper running?
David.
I'll try to answer.
SteamWebHelper.exe is "chromium"
It is a browser window.
It is the same as a chrome browser window, named chrome webhelper.
Each tab in a browser is its own webhelper, the overlay is a webhelper, steam friends and chat is a webhelper
the system tray icon right click menu is a webhelper (yes, a separate browser window)
Steam's main window is a webhelper of itself. Steam exe is just the controller of it all.
The CEF package allows embedding browser windows inside eachother, but that said, not every window acts like that. Most are full screen and pretend they are not, for example the Pop Up you get when someone sends you a message, which is its own webhelper. This one is clearly overwriting everything above it as well making it unclickable till the message is gone.
Summarized:
- We have a ready to open up "Message Popup"
- a ready to spawn in "right click system tray menu"
- a main window
- a notifications cascading window (green icon thingy)
- a steam news cascading window
- Steam Friends and Chat which may be closed but still needs a window ready to open
- each steam friend chat window
- a streaming/video watch window
- an overlay (for in games), which is held ready
- extra tabs (each tab is also one) (middle click links to see this)
- The login / loading / initializing install...and other notifications window is another one.
etc.
Those are all webhelpers
As to why some are bloated: well the Chromium package (the chrome browser) is just bloated.
It's also because of 'libraries' used to load in a specific part. (terrible unoptimized coding basically, just made-easy to code coding)
The Right Click menu on the discussion boards for example takes up an additional 40MB
it just shows 3 entries .... it should be less than 1KB worth of code, the entire packages that are called upon and searched into are just bloated basically.
Don't leave Steam running constantly. If you're not going to be using it exit it, shut it down completely.
Maybe you should check MS edge and other Browser what they are doing today, this is not steam browser only, i and other can't change what they all doing today.
Multi entry in the task manager. ( feel free not to use steam service go small mode. ) that's why steam made it back as a game launcher only.
Steam's a great platform but there's so many missed possible optimizations for the web browser itself that could save lots of players time and cost.
The main issue that everyone collectively agrees on is that Steam is quite far behind in optimizing its interface. We're here in 2025, and the biggest process that manages to lag an entire device is the built-in web browser. Someone actually took the time to go through a detailed explanation of all the processes. (See Elucidator's reply a few more comments above yours).
This is an ongoing problem that should not be swept under the rug with shilling excuses. If the most that we can do as a collective is to write to them or use forums/social media to express how this can be fixed so all players on both low- and high-resources should have one less headache in using their software.
A few others in this thread including myself have exhausted all options necessary - Closing other programs in the background, shutting Steam down when it's not being used, uninstalling games you don't play anymore, etc. Yet, the problem still persists.
I'm very sure there's a fix to this and I don't mind if they take their time. However, this should not be present now that things have moved forward to occupying less space on a device. If the Steam Web Helper is causing more issues than it is convenient for those who use *all* features, perhaps this is something on Steam's end and not really the players' fault.