Microsoft Copilot in Windows 11: Return to the Web, RAM at Risk
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Microsoft has recently altered the architecture of its Copilot application in Windows 11, transforming it into a web app encapsulated within Edge. This change, revealed through an inspection of the task manager, marks the third major modification of Copilot in two years. This decision comes at a time when the RAM market is facing a crisis, making this technical choice particularly problematic.
A Confusing Evolution of Copilot
In May 2023, Microsoft introduced Copilot as a sidebar in Windows 11, already utilizing web technologies via Bing Chat and Edge/WebView2. In 2024, the company attempted to integrate Copilot more deeply into Windows, transforming it into a resizable window, then into a Progressive Web App (PWA). By the end of 2024, a native version using WinUI was announced and launched in March 2025. However, this version was replaced by a new wrapper based on WebView2 as early as 2026.
The current version of Copilot, available in the Insider program, uses the Edge engine, as indicated by its version number being close to that of Edge. The task manager shows typical processes of a Chromium application, such as Renderer and GPU Process, confirming the use of a web shell.
Impact on RAM
The transformation of Copilot into a web application comes at a time when RAM is a precious resource. Since late 2025, the RAM market has been experiencing a severe shortage, with prices doubling or tripling. This situation is not expected to improve before 2027. In this context, every encapsulated web application, such as those using Electron or WebView, contributes to saturating standard configurations of 16 GB of RAM.
Applications like Discord, WhatsApp, and Teams, which rely on similar technologies, are already known for their excessive memory consumption. With Copilot now added to this list, it could exacerbate performance issues on machines already limited by RAM.
Although the web version of Copilot opens faster than its native predecessor, tests show that this speed does not necessarily translate into better performance during continuous use. Microsoft seems determined to impose Copilot, but the memory footprint of a browser could prove counterproductive in a context of RAM shortage.
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