MSEdgeView2.exe processes?

What the heck are these things? I have six of them running. Five of them show as suspended. I can Kill them, but they'll be back at the next boot, maybe sooner. They have a Command Line longer than the drive from Boston to Baton Rouge. They are there after logon.

I don't use Edge. I don't use widgets. I have none of the MS feeds of assorted information flowing my way... at least that I know of at this point, in the Start menu, or the Logon screen, or the Status bar, or in Edge itself.

I did try to do due diligence and Google, but most of the people having issues or complaining about them are using Edge and some of the various info tidbits.

What's kicking them off... and better yet, can I stamp it out?

Windows is slowly re-releasing some of the default Apps to use Edge WebView2 as the UI library. That's sort of like having an app require Adobe Flash or Macromedia Shockwave to run. Over time, it will be more common to see WebView2 processes running on behalf of the desktop Apps.

UWP apps have reached an evolutionary dead-end, and MS is shifting to WebView2 for the next generation of apps.

garlin said:

Windows is slowly re-releasing some of the default Apps to use Edge WebView2 as the UI library. That's sort of like having an app require Adobe Flash or Macromedia Shockwave to run. Over time, it will be more common to see WebView2 processes running on behalf of the desktop Apps.

UWP apps have reached an evolutionary dead-end, and MS is shifting to WebView2 for the next generation of apps.

Click to expand...

So EdgeWebView2 is a layer between programs and the device specific OS to let them layer on different categories of devices?

Is there any way to figure out what core "app" kicked these off?

From Task Manager, you can see the parent and child processes. Widgets (or "News and Interests") and Photos are now using WebView2.

Every time I reboot, the Widgets process, with all of the Webview2 processes, returns. I don't use Widgets or Edge so I just delete the Widgets process and it all goes away. Since I only reboot when I get updates, Widgets stays away until a reboot.

I also see that Windows Shell Experience and Windows Input Experience is also dragging along a bunch of Webview2 processes. However, if you stop those processes, they return very quickly. They can be removed, but I think that requires a Registry modification.

garlin said:

From Task Manager, you can see the parent and child processes. Widgets (or "News and Interests") and Photos are now using WebView2.

View attachment 132810

Click to expand...

Thanks. I don't have any Widgets running and I could not find it in Task Manager... went back to Process Explorer, shifted the view, and I see they are actually running under the SearchHost.exe process. I do have that running again while I get to know Win 11, so I guess I'll have to wait until I shut it back down again to dispose of these.

K7MEM said:

Every time I reboot, the Widgets process, with all of the Webview2 processes, returns. I don't use Widgets or Edge so I just delete the Widgets process and it all goes away. Since I only reboot when I get updates, Widgets stays away until a reboot.

I also see that Windows Shell Experience and Windows Input Experience is also dragging along a bunch of Webview2 processes. However, if you stop those processes, they return very quickly. They can be removed, but I think that requires a Registry modification.

Click to expand...

I shut off all the Widgets I could find: Start Menu, Status Bar, and Signon Page. I don't have any widgets running at all at this point. There must be some widgets still running on yours if you're seeing the process.

I didn't keep detailed notes... I just googled as needed to kill each one as well as shutting them all off in the Settings area wherever I found hints of them. I might have pointers to some of it though if you're interested. I'd have to dig through my saved links.

i have webview2 blocked in my firewall.
i also went into safe mode and deleted as much of the webview2 folder contents that could be deleted.
i then changed what was left in the webview2 folder and all the .exe files to .bak

i have no webview2 running in task manager or anywhere else.
best of luck, Steve ..

I just disable Widgets with Group Policy.
Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Widgets