This week’s talk of the town on X is Discord’s experiment that automatically restarts the desktop client when memory usage is high, but it turns out the experiment was not in bad faith, and Discord is actually quite serious about patching performance issues. But is Electron really the right choice for Windows 11?
Discord is an Electron app, and if you don’t understand what the Electron framework is, consider it a full Google Chrome window with Node.js runtime. Now, Discord’s every server or message is a separate tab, and as you keep loading a new tab (new server, message, function), memory usage keeps piling up.
Nobody likes Electron, but sadly, it’s one of the most used frameworks on Windows, and Discord is one of those companies.
Microsoft Teams is also still related to Electron, and Microsoft recently acknowledged how Teams could be consuming all your expensive RAM. While Microsoft’s solution for Teams performance woes is to create a separate process for calls, Discord is trying to automatically restart the client.
Discord says its Windows client RAM usage is mostly around 1GB, but it can also go up to 4GB. While Discord says it’s updating the app to reduce memory usage, the company argues that an experiment to automatically restart the client when RAM usage hits 4GB was a fair decision.
“Yes, we’re testing a restart when memory exceeds 4GB (normal usage is <1GB), Discord employee wrote in a Reddit post spotted by Windows Latest. However, that does not mean Discord quits itself and launches again when the usage hits 4GB. Instead, it looks at a couple of metrics, such as the “user status.”
For example, if you’ve been idle (away from keyboard/mouse input) for at least 30 minutes or you are not connected to a Voice or Video call, you can expect Discord to automatically restart itself when RAM usage hits 4GB. But there’s another requirement. The app must be running for 1 hour.
Discord argues that the experiment is in good faith, and it does not restart the client more than once every 24 hours.
Discord confirms testing several fixes to reduce RAM usage on Windows 11
Discord kicked off its “initiative” to reduce memory usage on Windows in October 2025, and there have been quite a few notable advancements. For example, the company fixed memory leaks in up to nine different scenarios.
Likewise, Discord also reduced high memory usage for some users.
“Some users are seeing numbers that are at least lower than before. Overall, we’re seeing a 5% reduction in p95 memory so far, with more work to be done,” the company noted.”
[We] Uncovered issues upstream at the platform/OS/driver/hardware level, and we’ve worked closely with partners to provide stand-alone repros and ultimately fixes.”
Discord’s problem is not just Electron, as the app itself is poorly built.
For example, some developers spotted that Discord (through a library called systeminformation) has been doing some very clumsy stuff. Instead of using proper Windows APIs, it keeps calling PowerShell with big commands like Get-WmiObject Win32_logicaldisk just to get basic system info.
These issues were later resolved, but Discord has a long way to go, and I can’t really blame the company when Microsoft’s own apps are web-based.
