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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T12:03:15+00:00

Why does the memory decrease when you minimize an Application ? I found this

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Why does the memory decrease when you minimize an Application ? I found this out while running a Flash Application in IE. It was taking around 200 MB memory but when I minimized the IE it came down to 5 MB’s. I saw similar behaviour with Outlook and other EXE’s.

I googled and found out that the working set of a process decreases when a window is minimized.

Is this documented by Microsoft ? What part of the working set is actually removed ? Is that part sent to the virtual memory?

What are the implications of this on performance ?

Does this behaviour prevail in Linux too ?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Windows automatically does this. This link seems relevant

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/293215

    You also get applications where behaviour can be adjusted. I do know that for browsers such as firefox you can set whether memory is released when minimized

    http://kb.mozillazine.org/Config.trim_on_minimize

    In terms of Linux, I guess this is more specific to window managers such as KDE/GNOME rather than the kernel

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