process and memory dump/kill in steam

[eqalidan]

So I have steam open at all times, and have the hardware to take the hit.
currently with nothing but steam and an idle game open, I have 10 processes, steam itself is 200mb and steamwebhelper.exe is 300mb across the 8 helpers, this is after I killed the processes because 4 of them were nearing 1gb

would it be possible to have a button/in steam method to kill these/stop them? I personally have 64gb of ram so like I said, I can take the hit, but if I was on 8gb or 16gb, I would have to kill programs just to load games and steam wouldn't be doing me any favors in that regard.

[Tharon]

In the Windows command prompt use this :

taskkill /F /IM "steamwelbhelper.exe"

You can put it in .bat file if you don't want to type it everytime.
It will kill every chromium instance, but Steam will recreate them immediately, so you can't really get rid of them, only "flush" them.

[eqalidan]

Originally posted by Tharon:

In the Windows command prompt use this :

taskkill /F /IM "steamwelbhelper.exe"

You can put it in .bat file if you don't want to type it everytime.
It will kill every chromium instance, but Steam will recreate them immediately, so you can't really get rid of them, only "flush" them.

Personally I do this with resource monitor and and control clicking, but having something like this be part of steam, like a low resource mode for when you want to play a demanding game, like let's say cities skylines for a ram intensive game, it would be nice to be able to engage it and it wouldn't grow out of control. Like I said, I have the resources personally, but a lot of gaming rigs likely have 16gb or less, and I know from a fresh windows boot with a few chrome tabs how much that eats up a lot of games that push it ram wise may run into ram issues, and steam isn't doing any favors.

[TorMazila]

Originally posted by eqalidan:

but a lot of gaming rigs likely have 16gb or less, and I know from a fresh windows boot with a few chrome tabs how much that eats up a lot of games that push it ram wise may run into ram issues, and steam isn't doing any favors.

Those processes appear as you browse the store and such. Imagine someone browsing through discussions while playing a game - like to find quest solution or something... Autokilling will not be great.
Besides, those who have 2/4/8 gigs - typically have swapfile turned on (did you turn it off ?) and it does solve such issues. blindly taskkilling may lead to variety of side effects.

[eqalidan]

Originally posted by TorMazila:

Originally posted by eqalidan:

but a lot of gaming rigs likely have 16gb or less, and I know from a fresh windows boot with a few chrome tabs how much that eats up a lot of games that push it ram wise may run into ram issues, and steam isn't doing any favors.

Those processes appear as you browse the store and such. Imagine someone browsing through discussions while playing a game - like to find quest solution or something... Autokilling will not be great.
Besides, those who have 2/4/8 gigs - typically have swapfile turned on (did you turn it off ?) and it does solve such issues. blindly taskkilling may lead to variety of side effects.

I have 0 things in steam open beyond one idle game, and my library, I have 8 web helpers as background tasks eating 450mb of ram

I have been on an nvme since I had 32gb of ram, before that I had 16gb of ram, and I would constantly run into needing to clear some space for a game, I got into the habit of opening a "ram bomb" chrome tab that forced things into the page file. if I didn't do this, playing a game was an absolute nightmare where It would stutter like hell for minutes at a time, only stopping once the game or a program let up on ram. no amount of swapfile helps here, it still feels like a lagging mess

when I had 32gb I wouldn't hit the ram limit as much, but im on an nvme and I let things get out of hand, I have opened games where it just decides it needs 8gb for the menu and 10+ for gameplay, hit a wall and oh, what a fun lock up screen, why am I able to count the fps with how the mouse moves... oh ♥♥♥♥ I have 99% of ram use, immediately kill something, and it's just fine, though the game now runs like crap due to some things not being in ram, rather an nvme page file. I should mention I would get upwards 40gb in my page file at times on 32gb, since that time a few programs I use use FAR less ram, and aren't as likely to force a page file hit (one of the programs I use use to go from 6gb to 18gb when it auto saved and then back down to 6 as an example) and this forced me on 32 to hit page in games often enough.

but back on topic, I have seen those helpers eat around 4gb of ram with nothing open besides steam, this is the main reason a dump button of sorts or a 'im in game now' mode would be appreciated, I understand the issues of low ram, and I know how to diagnose the problem, most people likely don't.

[Cat on Linux]

for that reason I still use old UI where I can blacklist webhelpers (with -no-browser param for Windows and with chmod rules for Linux) without crippling library page.