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Some applications like Google Chrome and TweetDeck show up as several processes in Windows Task Manager. This means that the memory reported in each row is only part of the overall amount used by that application. Is there some way to view the total memory usage of an application or a group of related processes?

For example, in the screenshot below the total of all of the chrome.exe instances is 708,308 K, but I had to add that up manually as I can't find a way to get that total within Task Manager.

Screenshot of Task Manager

I have tried some alternatives such as Resource Monitor, Process Explorer and Process Hacker, but none of them seem to able to give the total either. I am using Windows 7 (Professional).

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5 Answers 5

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Use PowerShell:

  • (Get-Process chrome | Measure-Object WorkingSet -sum).sum
  • (Get-Process tweetd* | Measure-Object WorkingSet -sum).sum
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    Thanks, that gets some of the data I need, but I would not be able to use this method to find the process group with the highest total. I want to be able to sort them like in Task Manager.
    – Liam
    Apr 2, 2014 at 9:36
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    You can also add / 1GB to the end to get the total in GB instead of Bytes.
    – Greg Bray
    Aug 8, 2016 at 17:41
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    add / (1024 * 1024) to get the total in MB
    – rahulg
    May 6, 2018 at 7:25
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Process Hacker shows memory usage grouped per process on its Tray Icon and added the Option to the Main Window as per user request in January 2016. Here's an example screenshot:

Example Screengrab

The Main Window Option is configured in:

Options->Advanced->Include CPU (and other) usage of children in collapsed processes

With this option enabled, when you collapse a process tree, you see metrics for its entire tree.

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    Brilliant ! I have been looking for this for ..well..forever..ever since Chrome decided to scuttle the about:memory and its variations and Task Manager in Windows is crap, and Process Explorer too doesn't give a group solution. I had to hunt for the option you mentioned, wonder why it isn't the default. I had been cussing FF taking 1.4G now I see Chrome with 1.95 and growing ! This should be the accepted answer.
    – killjoy
    Jun 21, 2017 at 13:38
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    Process Hacker is a great tool - essentially a big "upgrade" of Process Explorer, with new open source code base, and lets you also see disk I/O (helped spot excessive I/O to pagefile.sys), manipulate Windows services, and much more. Great tip, and this should be accepted answer - PowerShell is not that easy to install for most people and Process Hacker is very flexible.
    – RichVel
    Apr 15, 2018 at 9:17
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    This should be the accepted answer
    – Oliver
    Apr 26, 2018 at 13:49
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Microsoft added this capability to Task Manager as of the Insider build 16226. The feature will go out to everyone with the next major update of Windows 10, scheduled for September/October 2017.

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Update: Doesn't work since Chromium 51.

Enter about:memory in Google Chrome and you'll be redirected to chrome://memory-redirect/

That page has totals for all popular running browsers:

enter image description here

Google Chrome's about: Pages

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    That is useful, thanks. But I don't want just browsers.
    – Liam
    Apr 17, 2014 at 10:48
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    These pages aren't accessible anymore. Chrome 73 Apr 9, 2019 at 15:17
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This has been answered already in the following thread

Is there a modern Process Manager supporting things like grouping (Imagine tens of chrome.exe's)?

Task manager in Windows 7 does not support grouping, but now does group processes in windows 8.

Process Explorer or Process Hacker appear to be good alternatives for what you are looking to do. As well as system explorer.

Resource Monitor can show memory usage, but for a process as a whole. enter image description here

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    I can group processes in both Process Explorer and Process Hacker, which allows me to kill a group easily, or hide child processes to avoid clutter. But both programs will show only the memory usage of the parent process, not the total of the group.
    – Liam
    Apr 1, 2014 at 15:33
  • Use resource monitor, memory tab
    – Pretzel
    Apr 1, 2014 at 15:43
  • Thank you @Pretzel but Resource Monitor also does not show me the total for a group of processes. If it works for you I would love to see a screenshot!
    – Liam
    Apr 1, 2014 at 16:00
  • @Liam Provided one. Under memory, it provides the total amount being used for that process. Ex: I currently have multiple instances/tabs of firefox open, which resource monitor shows the total memory usage for. Shows the process as a whole.
    – Pretzel
    Apr 1, 2014 at 16:17
  • That seems to be because there is a single Firefox process. Have a look at mine with many chrome.exe and only one firefox.exe i.imgur.com/EV83noj.png
    – Liam
    Apr 1, 2014 at 16:31

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