How to Check Which Apps Use the Most RAM

Updated October 22, 2026 · 8 min read

Desktop task manager showing memory usage bars for running applications — Sorting the Processes tab by memory turns a wall of program names into a short list of the programs actually holding on to memory.

Finding which apps use the most RAM takes about two minutes in Task Manager, but the list it gives you is only half of the answer. The other half is knowing what the numbers mean, because the figure most people watch is the one built to look reassuring. Sort the Processes tab by memory and expand the app groups first, then read the committed value in the performance graph, which tells you whether the machine is about to start paging to disk. On a laptop with 8 GB of memory, the gap between a comfortable machine and one that feels broken is often a browser and a sync client.

Find which apps use the most RAM in Task Manager

Open Task Manager with Ctrl + Shift + Esc, or right click the taskbar clock and choose Task Manager. On the Processes tab, click the Memory column header once and the list sorts from largest to smallest. Clicking again reverses it. That single click is the answer most people are looking for.

Windows 11 splits the list into an Apps block at the top and Background processes underneath. Windows 10 uses the same split in recent builds, while older Windows 10 versions show one flat list. The figure against a grouped app is the total for that group, and that is the number you want, because a single app is rarely one process.

Task Manager processes tab sorted by memory with app groups expanded — Sorted by memory, the app groups at the top of the list show immediately which programs hold the most.

Now expand a group. In Windows 11, right click an app row and choose Expand all. In Windows 10, click the small chevron to the left of the app name. You see the child processes that make up the group: one per browser site, a GPU process and a utility process. A group that looks small can hide four separate renderers, and knowing that changes what you do about it.

What in use, available, committed and cached mean

Switch to the Performance tab and select Memory in the left column. Each counter answers a different question.

In use is the memory held by your programs, the kernel and the drivers, and it is total memory minus what is available, which is why it sits so high on a healthy machine. Available is free memory plus the standby list, and it tells you whether you have room to work. Cached holds recently used file data so the next open is instant, and it includes the standby list. Committed is the virtual memory Windows has promised to processes, and it is the only figure here that is a real promise.

The graph shows that promise as Committed (Limit), for example 14.2 GB of 32.0 GB, where the limit is your installed memory plus the page file. When committed climbs towards the limit, Windows starts moving the inactive parts of programs into the page file on drive C, and that is the moment a fast machine turns into a slow one. In use tells you what is happening now, committed tells you what is going to happen next.

Close a heavy app and the in use figure barely moves, because the memory went into the standby list rather than back to the free pool. It is still reclaimable, and the Available figure shows it. Only a restart clears the standby list completely.

The Efficiency tab in Windows 10 and what replaced it in Windows 11

Windows 10 version 1903 from 2019 added an Efficiency tab to Task Manager. Its Memory section shows the same In use, Available, Committed and Cached counters as the Performance view, with a rolling history graph so you can watch the moment a program spikes, and an Energy section on laptops that have a battery.

Task manager efficiency tab showing the memory graph with in use and available areas — The Efficiency tab in Windows 10 gives a rolling memory history graph, which makes a sudden spike obvious.

Microsoft removed the Efficiency tab in Windows 11 22H2, so on a current Windows 11 machine you will not find it. The equivalent detail moved into the Performance tab, where the Memory view carries the same four counters and the same history graph. Right click that graph and choose Show technical details to add page reads, page writes and hard faults underneath. Recent Windows 11 builds also show an Energy column in the Processes tab on laptops with a battery.

The apps that quietly eat the most RAM

Once you have the list, the names are usually familiar. These are the ones that account for most of what I see on support calls.

Browsers, where each site and each extension runs as its own process. Tabs left open for days add up fast.
Microsoft Teams and Slack, which are built on Electron and carry a browser engine inside the app. Each chat window and call adds its own process.
Several browser windows left open at once, since each one duplicates the browser's own overhead on top of its tabs.
Visual Studio Code, where the editor is light but the extension host and each language server are not. The built in Extension Bisect command disables extensions one at a time to find the offender.
Adobe apps, which keep large documents and photo catalogs in memory and load their shared libraries once per process.
Sync clients such as OneDrive, Dropbox and Google Drive, which hold file indexes and cached copies, plus Steam when it pre-compiles shaders after a driver update.
Antivirus scanning, which climbs sharply while a large folder is swept and settles again afterwards.
Virtual machines in Hyper-V, VMware or VirtualBox, which hold the memory of a whole second operating system. Hyper-V can grow a guest at any time, and VMware or VirtualBox normally reserve the full configured amount at start.

Side by side comparison of a light and a heavy memory user on a desktop — A single chat client or a running virtual machine can outweigh a dozen ordinary background processes.

Find out where the memory went

Four checks separate a real memory hog from a misleading one. First, expand the process tree and look for one child process that carries most of the weight, because the fix is usually to close that one tab, plugin or window rather than the whole program. Second, read the commit size rather than the working set. Open the Details tab, right click a column header, choose Select columns and add Commit size.

Third, open the Startup apps tab. The Startup impact column marks the entries that cost the most at sign-in, and anything logged as high impact is worth disabling. Windows 11 keeps the same list under Settings, Apps and Startup. Fourth, read RAM usage in a clean boot. Run msconfig, open the General tab, tick Diagnostic boot and restart. If the machine is comfortable in a diagnostic boot and slow after a normal sign-in, a startup entry is the cause. Untick the box and restart once more to restore the machine.

One thing skews every reading: Memory Integrity, the Core isolation feature under Windows Security, reserves a block of memory that no program can use.

Fixes that actually free memory

Closing tabs works, and the browsers help you do it in bulk. Edge has Sleeping tabs and Chrome has Memory Saver, both of which suspend inactive tabs and hand their memory back until you return to them. Sign out of sync clients you do not use rather than leaving them running.

Adding RAM is the only fix for a machine that is genuinely short, and trimming startup entries removes the steady background load rather than the symptom.

The part that catches people out is when the problem is not memory at all but paging. If committed sits near the limit, Windows writes the idle parts of your programs to the page file on drive C, and every one of those writes goes through that disk. On a slow drive the machine crawls, and the symptoms look exactly like a memory shortage. This is where disk health enters the picture, so check SSD and HDD health in Windows before you buy a memory module. Free space on the system drive matters too, since the page file needs room to work, and finding the large files taking up disk space is a sensible first step.

If Task Manager itself stutters or its graphs freeze while you watch, suspect the graphics driver first. Updating graphics drivers safely covers that case.

Resource Monitor, Process Explorer and PowerShell

Task Manager is the overview. When you need the detail, press Windows + R and run resmon to open Resource Monitor. Its Memory tab shows a Commit Size column that no other built-in view gives you, along with hard faults and disk activity per process. Sort by commit size and the program that has reserved the most memory rises to the top.

Process Explorer, the free Sysinternals tool from Microsoft, goes further. It shows the whole process tree including background and system processes, marks processes hidden from the normal list, and can show every DLL a program has loaded.

PowerShell gives you the ten heaviest processes in one line:

Get-Process | Sort-Object WS -Descending | Select-Object -First 10 Name, @{Name='MB';Expression={[math]::Round($_.WS/1MB,1)}}

WS is the working set, the physical memory in use right now. For private memory, the nearest equivalent to the commit size, swap WS for PM:

Get-Process | Sort-Object PM -Descending | Select-Object -First 10 Name, @{Name='PrivateMB';Expression={[math]::Round($_.PM/1MB,1)}}

Run these from a normal PowerShell window, no administrator rights needed. If the two lists have different leaders, you have found a process that reserved a lot of memory and is not using it.

Frequently asked questions

Why does memory usage stay high after I close an app?

Closing an app does not hand the memory straight back. Windows keeps the pages in the standby list and in the file cache so it can reuse them, which is why Available rises while In use barely moves. That memory is still recoverable, and a restart clears the list completely.

Is it normal for Task Manager to show 90 percent memory in use?

It can be perfectly normal. Judge the figure by Available and by the committed value rather than by In use. Plenty of healthy machines sit above 90 percent because the cache has taken the spare memory, and they still run smoothly.

What is the difference between Task Manager and Resource Monitor?

Task Manager gives you the overview. Resource Monitor, opened with the resmon command, adds the columns that explain the overview, including commit size, hard faults and disk activity per process. Use Resource Monitor when you already know the app and want to know why it is heavy.

How much RAM does a home PC actually need?

There is no single right figure, it depends on what you keep open. For browsing, mail and document work, 8 GB is a reasonable floor on Windows 11. 16 GB removes most of the pressure for people who run many browser tabs alongside an Office suite, and it matters more if you edit photos, video or code.

Does faster RAM help more than adding more of it?

Adding memory decides how many things you can keep open, and speed decides how quickly they respond. When a machine is paging to disk because it has run out of memory, buying more memory helps far more than buying faster modules.

What to remember

Sort the Processes tab by memory, then expand the groups to see the child processes behind each app.
Read Available and committed rather than In use, because the standby list and file cache make In use look worse than it is.
The Efficiency tab exists in Windows 10 1903 and later, and was removed in Windows 11 22H2 in favour of the Performance memory view.
Browsers, chat clients, sync tools and virtual machines account for most of the memory on a busy machine.
A diagnostic boot through msconfig proves whether a startup entry is the problem.
Committed near the limit means paging, and paging on a slow disk looks exactly like a memory shortage.

Open Task Manager now, sort by memory, and write down the top three names and their figures. Then check the committed value in the Performance tab against the limit. If there is plenty of headroom, the machine is fine and you can stop worrying about it. If committed is close to the limit, start with the startup apps tab.