A bug in YouTube is causing RAM consumption to spike abnormally, reaching up to 7 GB in a single browser tab. This is not about an old or low-resource computer, but rather an error on the website itself that affects users with modern hardware. The problem persists even with videos paused.
The rendering loop that saturates system memory 🖥️
The origin of the bug lies in how YouTube handles its interface. Elements like buttons, thumbnails, and recommendations are constantly recalculated in an infinite loop. This causes the browser to accumulate background processes without freeing up the used RAM. When opening the task manager, a progressive increase in consumption to abnormal figures is observed. Closing the tab is the only temporary solution until Google releases a patch.
The tab that weighs more than your operating system 🔥
Now it turns out that to watch a tutorial on how to fix your computer, you need another computer to run it. In the meantime, you can take advantage of warming up the room with your laptop fan, since it's already running at full blast, at least it can serve as a heater. The good thing is that if your RAM explodes, at least you'll know it wasn't your fault, but because YouTube decided its like button needed 3 GB of its own memory.