Steam Client Webhelper Hogging a TON of Memory

[Merovingian]

Steam Client Webhelper is running a huge amount of memory on my system, and it seems to have started just a few weeks ago. It happens even when I'm not running Steam. PLUS - every time I try to "end task" Steam Client Webhelper, it starts right back up. I've close it a number of times, and it immediately restarts, and immediately starts hogging memory. At times in the Task Manager I see it running more than once.

As of this posting right now, it's listed as running 8 times separately (this is from the Task Manager).

Anyone else experiencing this?

[thalia]

yes, having the same problem. help.

[Carlsberg]

How much is a ton of memory?

[Ferox_Stormdragon]

i've never had the steam client go above ~800mb, but then again i have 32gb ram so it's a nonissue

[Bad 💀 Motha]

I finally did have this issue on one system. Something within Userdata folder was doing it. I wiped all of that out and reboot the PC and let Steam recreate it and now it's back down to 500-600MB again

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Because SteamWebHelper are the clients browser tabs. You can't close them, HELLO

[Merovingian]

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

I finally did have this issue on one system. Something within Userdata folder was doing it. I wiped all of that out and reboot the PC and let Steam recreate it and now it's back down to 500-600MB again

My concern is that it's running Steam Client Webhelper multiple times. The memory usage shouldn't be an issue, but for some reason, it is.

Task Manager says 600-800mb of memory - I have 16GB, but ever since this started happening, my games run for ♥♥♥♥ (Stellaris won't even go for more than 20 min without crashing).

[Bad 💀 Motha]

600-800MB is normal though.

If you want it lower, disable the logging on to Steam Friends when Client starts up.

One thing I've been doing is setting all the SteamWebHelper to Low Priority and then once I load up a game, if you allowed Steam Overlay then after a game loads up it will load GameOverlayUI as well, set that to Low Priority as well this actually helped the Client and Steam Overlay be bit more snappy and responsive

[👾]

Originally posted by Kitty:

Originally posted by kileydumas:

Task Manager says 600-800mb of memory - I have 16GB, but ever since this started happening, my games run for ♥♥♥♥ (Stellaris won't even go for more than 20 min without crashing).

This is completely normal and expected behavior for the current version of steam. This is working correctly. This is not a bug. There is nothing wrong at all.

It is not normal. A background process which has the option to launch at startup has no business taking up that much. What does it need all of that RAM for? I suspect it's the store page which it will always (pre)load even when it is not visible. I tried overriding the store url with command line parameter, but I can't get it to work.

[👾]

Originally posted by Kitty:

Originally posted by kileydumas:

Anyone else experiencing this?

Here's an idea: Maybe you could try SEARCHING the steam forums next time.

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/11/6516193260170046133/

Not only are other people having the same problem but there's already a thread with 20 pages of replies discussing it including a fix.

What is the fix? -no-browser? Doesn't work anymore.

[Mad Scientist]

Originally posted by kileydumas:

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

I finally did have this issue on one system. Something within Userdata folder was doing it. I wiped all of that out and reboot the PC and let Steam recreate it and now it's back down to 500-600MB again

My concern is that it's running Steam Client Webhelper multiple times. The memory usage shouldn't be an issue, but for some reason, it is.

Task Manager says 600-800mb of memory - I have 16GB, but ever since this started happening, my games run for ♥♥♥♥ (Stellaris won't even go for more than 20 min without crashing).

That's not much memory to use, and is a perfectly acceptable amount. One browser tab of YT can use 1GB for me, discord can take 700MB or more easily, ubi/ea/gog use a similar amount and they do far less than Steam.

That's a normal amount of RAM use, if you're worried about using a lot of total memory with everything running, install more than 16GBs of RAM if the system can handle that.

[nullable]

Originally posted by Zwarte Klaas:

Originally posted by Kitty:

This is completely normal and expected behavior for the current version of steam. This is working correctly. This is not a bug. There is nothing wrong at all.

It is not normal. A background process which has the option to launch at startup has no business taking up that much. What does it need all of that RAM for? I suspect it's the store page which it will always (pre)load even when it is not visible. I tried overriding the store url with command line parameter, but I can't get it to work.

You have opinions about how much RAM you think a program ought to use. Regardless there's millions of Steam users and Steam using 600-800MB is normal by virtue of that's how much RAM it uses. You not liking it, for whatever reason, doesn't it make it abnormal. You're just being contrary.

Originally posted by Zwarte Klaas:

Originally posted by Kitty:

Here's an idea: Maybe you could try SEARCHING the steam forums next time.

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/11/6516193260170046133/

Not only are other people having the same problem but there's already a thread with 20 pages of replies discussing it including a fix.

What is the fix? -no-browser? Doesn't work anymore.

Most of the time the fix to not having enough RAM is to add more RAM. Programs use RAM and you can't always haggle over that and your opinions won't usually matter.

[👾]

Originally posted by nullable:

Originally posted by Zwarte Klaas:

It is not normal. A background process which has the option to launch at startup has no business taking up that much. What does it need all of that RAM for? I suspect it's the store page which it will always (pre)load even when it is not visible. I tried overriding the store url with command line parameter, but I can't get it to work.

You have opinions about how much RAM you think a program ought to use. Regardless there's millions of Steam users and Steam using 600-800MB is normal by virtue of that's how much RAM it uses. You not liking it, for whatever reason, doesn't it make it abnormal. You're just being contrary.

Originally posted by Zwarte Klaas:

What is the fix? -no-browser? Doesn't work anymore.

Most of the time the fix to not having enough RAM is to add more RAM. Programs use RAM and you can't always haggle over that and your opinions won't usually matter.

OP: "My roof leaks and the landlord should fix it"

nullable: "That's completely normal, everyone's roof leaks. Your opinion about how waterproof a roof should be does not matter. The solution is to put more buckets in your house".

[Mad Scientist]

Originally posted by Zwarte Klaas:

Originally posted by nullable:

You have opinions about how much RAM you think a program ought to use. Regardless there's millions of Steam users and Steam using 600-800MB is normal by virtue of that's how much RAM it uses. You not liking it, for whatever reason, doesn't it make it abnormal. You're just being contrary.





Most of the time the fix to not having enough RAM is to add more RAM. Programs use RAM and you can't always haggle over that and your opinions won't usually matter.

OP: "My roof leaks and the landlord should fix it"

nullable: "That's completely normal, everyone's roof leaks. Your opinion about how waterproof a roof should be does not matter. The solution is to put more buckets in your house".

600MB-800MB is entirely normal for the Steam Client to use, it's literally designed to use around that much so there is no issue with its RAM consumption.

Maybe it's time people stopped using 4GB/8GB and 16GB then complaining about normal, modern ram consumption values also forgetting the OS can consume 3.5-4GB of it?

You buy an amount of RAM to never hit as a cap, 16GB is easily capped depending on the tasks one is up to.

Don't use disingenuous replies like a roof leak, because in this example it would be "Yes its normal for water to go down the roof into the gutter system without issues", not the "leak" example.

[👾]

Originally posted by Mad Scientist:

600MB-800MB is entirely normal for the Steam Client to use, it's literally designed to use around that much so there is no issue with its RAM consumption.

"It is designed to use that much" ??? What are you talking about? It uses it for SOMETHING. What is that something and is it really necessary? I'm thinking that is quite unlikely. What is it actually doing when it is just sitting in my system tray, in offline mode, and I haven't even opened it once?

[MonkehMaster]

OP is 100% correct.


despite the memory leak that has cropped up with updates (through the months), not to mention the reported bug with steamwebhelper and an "achievements" file that causes the leak....

the amount of memory you have doesnt matter, so not sure why people use that as a deflection to push blame on people, instead of the offending software.

i have 64GB, i had steam leak up to 5GB of ram (only once so far), my OS using its own 5 to 6GB, that also caused a single crash (steam client crashed) and happened to be when clicking on the steam news icon.

that being said, while mentioning again, i have 64GB and im also, going to complain about steams memory usage.

so the nonsense said about... "Maybe it's time people stopped using 4GB/8GB and 16GB then complaining", isnt going to change a thing.

normal usage is 500MB-600MB, not 1GB or higher....

link to memory leak bug...

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta/discussions/0/4361247820935786412/