What you are actually running
Open the Processes tab and an Electron app dissolves into a small process tree: a main process, several renderers, a GPU process, a crash handler, an updater. Each renderer is a full Chromium engine with its own V8 heap, its own copy of the framework code and its own garbage collector — nothing is shared with the browser you already have open. That is why Slack with a few workspaces idles past a gigabyte, and why closing the window often leaves a dozen processes alive in the tray.
The disk and battery bills follow the same logic. The installer bundles the whole runtime, so a "lightweight" chat client weighs a few hundred megabytes on disk, and several of them comfortably out-mass the programs they replaced. On a laptop, an always-resident Chromium tree costs real battery hours, not theoretical ones.
Why it feels worse than the RAM numbers
Memory is only half the story; the perceived heaviness is startup and interface latency. On launch, each app has to spin up V8, parse its JavaScript bundle and render the UI in a layout engine built for documents, not native widgets — on a spinning disk or a busy CPU that is seconds of blank window. Long message histories, animated emoji and webviews re-rendering entire conversations do the rest: the engine is doing general-purpose work a native client would do for a fraction of the cost.
Paying less Chrome tax without quitting the apps
The realistic goal is fewer Chromium instances, not zero — you use these apps because the service lives there. A handful of habits covers most of the win. None of them requires giving up a tool you actually need.
- Prefer the browser version of a service when it exists — one renderer inside an already-open browser beats a whole new runtime
- Turn off "close to tray", or quit for real, so the process tree actually unloads at the end of the day
- Trim workspaces and logged-in accounts — each one typically keeps another renderer alive
- Disable animated emoji, GIF autoplay and other cosmetic switches where the app offers them
- Skip the all-in-one wrapper apps that embed five services in one window — they sum the tax, they do not share it
- For a service you use all day, a browser pinned tab or an installed PWA keeps a single instance across everything
Questions and Answers
Why do Electron apps use so much RAM?
Each one runs its own private Chromium with separate renderer processes per window or workspace, sharing nothing with your browser or with each other. Five Electron apps are effectively five browsers running side by side.
Is there a lighter alternative to Electron apps?
Often, yes: the same service in a normal browser tab, or installed as a PWA, reuses the browser you already run instead of shipping another Chromium. Some services also offer native clients that weigh a fraction of the Electron build.
Know what is included before you buy.
The one-time 30-minute trial covers core tools. PRO-labelled features stay locked until a paid license is activated.
Read next
Write to us: [email protected]