Following large-scale dissatisfaction with the overall Windows experience, Microsoft in March 2026 issued a statement explaining that it would be working to deliver “smoother navigation and more reliable performance for everyday tasks.” Now, over four months later, Pavan Davaluri, President of Windows + Devices, has provided an update on the progress of this initiative in a new X post.
In this X post, one of the more notable improvements Davuluri claims Microsoft has made during recent months—along with improvements to the Taskbar and Start—is improved memory efficiency. He explains that Microsoft has implemented “substantial improvements in memory efficiency and latency,” in order to “accelerate the modernization of Windows 11,” that it has reduced memory overhead across apps and components, and that the company has tuned WinUI 3 to make built-in apps use less memory. Microsoft also outlined its plans for the future of Windows 11 memory efficiency improvements, specifically stating that the Windows team will be working on “memory optimization for 8 GB and above.”
Memory optimization for 8 GB and above: Reducing Windows memory footprint to deliver a fast and responsive Windows experience across the PCs customers use every day.Alongside all of these areas, we’ve steadily been introducing several improvements to the memory efficiency of Windows, from taking advantage of a more efficient memory allocator to reduce overhead across apps and components, continued tuning of WinUI 3 so that apps built on it use less memory by design, as well as driving efficiencies across Chromium and Webview2 components when they appear in the operating system.Despite Microsoft’s efforts, in a recent TechPowerUp reader poll, only 6% of 24,100 participants said that Windows was “noticeably improved,” while 12% noted “minor improvements,” and a whopping 46% said that it “feels the same to me.” Perhaps more damning, 36% of TechPowerUp readers polled said that Windows 11 was “actually getting worse” following Microsoft’s improvement plan announcement.