WebView2
Ranked 5 of 9 browser engines by recommenders
Lets developers build desktop apps with web tech on a shared Windows runtime, lighter than Electron. Critics say its spread across Windows bloats memory and processes.
Lets developers build desktop apps with web tech on a shared Windows runtime, lighter than Electron. Critics say its spread across Windows bloats memory and processes.
21 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 7
- criticize it
- 14
- approval share
- 33%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 7 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Shared runtime, lighter than Electron
“It's lighter weight than Electron, if you consider that Webview2 ships with Windows and is shared with other Webview2 consumers”
Comment from 19 Jun 2026 in “Microsoft new Outlook takes 10 seconds to do what Outlook Classic does instantly” “the recommended route is one that shares the runtime across multiple apps”
Comment from 7 Apr 2026 in “"The new Copilot app for Windows 11 is really just Microsoft Edge"” Fast, smooth rendering
“WebView2 will cover all of these edges. If you are clever with web view environment and element reuse you can make the experience very smooth.”
Comment from 24 May 2026 in “dotNET (OK, C#) gets union types” “the HTML renderer is much faster than I'm able to make it myself using the native API”
Comment from 19 Jun 2026 in “Microsoft new Outlook takes 10 seconds to do what Outlook Classic does instantly” Builds complex hybrid apps easily
“WebView2 can be a fantastic experience when the application is designed around it with intent.”
Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “Microsoft new Outlook takes 10 seconds to do what Outlook Classic does instantly” “Now that we have WebView2, building complex hybrid apps is trivial.”
Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “Microsoft Hasn't Had a Coherent GUI Strategy Since Petzold”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Installed everywhere, cluttering Windows
“Another one full of Webview2 instances because new hires cannot code anything else”
Comment from 29 Jan 2026 in “PlayStation 2 Recompilation Project Is Absolutely Incredible” “That is how you get Webview2 all over the place.”
Comment from 18 Aug 2026 in “How do functions like alloca allocate memory from the stack?” “Webview2 all over the place on basic OS”
Comment from 19 Jul 2026 in “Even Microsoft couldn't make Windows 11 work well on 8GB of RAM” - Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “Rust is tier-1 language at Microsoft”
- Comment from 11 Aug 2026 in “Microsoft Responds to Outcry After Quiet Enterprise Install of Beta 'Photos' App”
Heavy memory and process overhead
“show up as msedgewebview2.exe, so you also don't know which app is consuming gigs of memory”
Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “Rust is tier-1 language at Microsoft” “WebView2 spawns ~400Mb worth of various browser processes”
Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “Microsoft new Outlook takes 10 seconds to do what Outlook Classic does instantly” “Processes in Windows are very expensive objects.”
Comment from 19 Jun 2026 in “Microsoft new Outlook takes 10 seconds to do what Outlook Classic does instantly” Unfixable bugs and crashes
“In a complicated Excel sheet I had the Conditional Formatting Rules Magaer crash due to an issue in EmbeddedWebView2.dll.”
Comment from 30 Jan 2026 in “Winapp, the Windows App Development CLI – Windows Developer Blog” “I eventually found a few unfixable bugs with existing WebView2 and WKWebView that I could not work around”
Comment from 10 May 2026 on Hacker News Microsoft control and rugpulls
“Microsoft itself rugpulls even stuff they offer as "improvements" and "better"”
Comment from 4 May 2026 in “Windows API Is Successful Cross-Platform API” “WebView2 is controlled by Windows Update in Windows 10”
Comment from 25 Jun 2026 in “Deno 2.9”
Other browser engines people recommend
The four most recommended other browser engines, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Servo browser engine | 81 | 32 | 72% | 12 | — | Approved |
| WebKit | 33 | 33 | 50% | 12 | — | — |
| Blitz | 14 | 5 | 74% | 10 | — | Approved |
| One Agent One Browser | 12 | 4 | 75% | 2 | — | — |
| WebView2This page | 7 | 14 | 33% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
27 of the 30 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“show up as msedgewebview2.exe, so you also don't know which app is consuming gigs of memory”
“The problem is the Webview2 prevalence”
“That is how you get Webview2 all over the place.”
“low effort hand waving about how WebView2 would be continuously improved”
“hence the Webview2 all over the place”
“Webview2 all over the place on basic OS”
“the Microsoft Webview Framework is Edge-based and will break a variety of useful applications if it's not available.”
“WebView2 is controlled by Windows Update in Windows 10”
“the HTML renderer is much faster than I'm able to make it myself using the native API”
“Processes in Windows are very expensive objects.”
“It's lighter weight than Electron, if you consider that Webview2 ships with Windows and is shared with other Webview2 consumers”
“WebView2 spawns ~400Mb worth of various browser processes”
“WebView2 can be a fantastic experience when the application is designed around it with intent.”
“WebView2 will cover all of these edges. If you are clever with web view environment and element reuse you can make the experience very smooth.”
“I eventually found a few unfixable bugs with existing WebView2 and WKWebView that I could not work around”
“Microsoft itself rugpulls even stuff they offer as "improvements" and "better"”
“the recommended route is one that shares the runtime across multiple apps”
“Now that we have WebView2, building complex hybrid apps is trivial.”
“I like the idea of using a transparent background in the webview. That would compose really well.”
“This takes about 60 seconds in a web view.”
“In a complicated Excel sheet I had the Conditional Formatting Rules Magaer crash due to an issue in EmbeddedWebView2.dll.”
“Another one full of Webview2 instances because new hires cannot code anything else”
“Not surprising given the amount of Webview2 and WinUI/WinRT that Windows 11 happens to contain.”
“actively making performance horrible”
“Microsoft really needs to dump WebView2 and go back to native code”
“Microsoft ships JS/WebView2 based apps instead of dogfooding their own stuff.”
“On Windows it's already possible with WebView2 but developers need to choose to go that route.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.