Constant memory leak after opening Store page

[gbsf]

Your system information

• Steam client version (build number or date): 1683078372
• Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): Arch Linux
• Opted into Steam client beta?: Yes
• Have you checked for system updates?: Yes

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

After opening the store page, steamwebhelper's memory starts steadily growing. It continues to do so even after closing the window completely, as long as the store was the last page open. Opening the library, or any other page, frees this leaked memory. I had a look, but there was nothing interesting in cef_log.txt.

This is not a new issue, I have been seeing this behavior for a long time now, on NVidia and Intel graphics, with and without GPU acceleration enabled, in two different notebooks. Only now I noticed just the store had this problem.

Below is a memory consumption graph I made of all steamwebhelper processes; it is very clear that something wrong is happening. The periodic drops look like GC passes, so maybe it points to a Javascript object leak.

Note: I made no attempt to adjust for shared memory, so there might have been some amount of double accounting

1. Started steam with -silent
2. Opened Store, then closed window
3. Opened Library, then closed window
4. Opened Store again, kept window open
5. Selected Community page
6. Selected My Profile page

[Tourfaint]

Can confirm, steamwebhelper does seem to use up a lot more memory with this update. Build 1683078372, on kubuntu.

[Arcitec]

Happens in the stable (non-beta) steam too and has been like this a long time. At least several months, maybe years.

[cwrau]

Same thing going on here, just killed the steamwebhelper with ~12GiB

[MagZu]

same thing here, but i seem to be able to workaround it by going to view -> small mode. steam isnt as exciting in the view but does not swallow up my 32gb of memory at least

[alioguzhan]

Same here. steamwebhelper was consuming ~11 GB before I killed it.

OS: NixOS 23.05
Kernel: 6.1.35
Steam Version:  1689034492
Steam Runtime: steam-runtime_0.20230509.49499
X Window Manager: Gnome Shell 44.2

[somewhatfrog]

It slowly eats up VRAM until games start to choke or just freeze. This happens both with and without hardware acceleration/rendering/smooth scrolling in steam, overlay disabled. Arch LTS, Nvidia latest stable driver, Xorg.

[hasezoey]

i think i also just ran into this issue, noticed that steamwebhelper was using 27% memory (of 15.5GB, so ~4.1GB) even though no steam window was open or a game open (steam was only in the background / apptray), but once i opened the library it all got freed (down to 2.3% usage, ~300mb)

Steam Version: 1692390949

EDIT: i could also reproduce it, though it takes some time to be a noticeable memory increase, for example it starts with ~2% memory usage, and after ~2 hours it is at 7%

[soupcan97]

I've been running into this regularly on my laptop... This time it happened overnight (Steam was running for 12 hours or so). Only a Steam Chat window was open.

My system started becoming slow and I found out that Steam was using 10GB of RAM, exhausting my RAM and swap file.

Didn't get to test if anything (like opening the library) freed it because by that point it had become completely unresponsive and I had to kill Steam.

This occurred on Ubuntu 22.04, Steam snap.

[aa889788]

can confirm mem leak at my steam-headless docker version 1698777785

[tkp206093]

same for windows ver

[JerryDELUXE]

Happens to me on Fedora as well.