Discord has long been the go-to platform for gaming communties. Whether that be a group of friends looking for a convenient place to host a voice call, or an official developer-managed server focused on a particular game, genre, or something even more specific. However, the performance tax of Discord has occasionally been questioned, especially as high RAM usage and memory leaks have been highlighted by users.

Wumpus Central, an account which reports on Discord news, leaks, and other datamined information recently joked that Discord is finally “fixing” memory leaks, thanks to the addition of a ‘feature’ that restarts the client if your RAM usage gets too high. It’s fair to say that this isn’t an elegant way of fixing the problem – Discord has now confirmed this is a temporary workaround.

Restarting to fix memory leaks is an “experiment”

An official Discord staff account has posted on Reddit to address the recently leaked ‘feature’. They confirm that the ‘feature’, which forces your client to restart when exceeding 4GB memory, is not intended as a long-term fix. Discord says it has already addressed “9+ memory issues” and reduced memory usage for “a significant portion of users”. There is always more work to be done, and the Discord devs seem to be targeting ‘normal’ usage of less than 1GB.

As for the temporary restart fix when you hit 4GB of RAM usage, this only triggers under certain circumstances:

• Only triggers when you’re AFK
• Never during a call
• Maximum once per day
• Only after the app has been running for at least an hour
• Preserves your message drafts and open channels

Discord notes that “memory issues” can refer to leaks, deadlocks, and overflown buffers, so it’s not only about memory leaks – though that is the deficieny most known to users. In any case, there’s no reason why Discord should be getting close to exceeding 4GB of RAM usage, so while the current workaround isn’t pretty, it’s at least something for the time being. As always, rival Teamspeak’s social media team was quick to joke about on the temporary ‘fix’ and ongoing memory issues.

About the Author

Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.