Increasing Memory in WSL2

You guys already know what is wsl2, so let’s not waste time. I assume at this point, you already have a distro for your WSL2 ready and don’t know how to increase the RAM/memory.

For this example, I’ll be using Debian 12 (Bookworm).

Powershell

Go to your $HOME directory in powershell. If you don’t know what your HOME directory is, just do

echo $HOME

This would show you the home directory.

After this, we need to create a file called .wslconfig in the $HOME directory. We can do this from PowerShell itself.

notepad.exe .wslconfig

Notepad

A new Notepad window might open, in there just type

.wslconfig

[wsl2]
memory=8GB

Now, for the memory= value, your value should be equal to or less than your actual Memory / RAM you have.

Let’s say, I have 16 GB of RAM, then I can give 4 GB, 8GB, 10GB, 16 GB etc.. as long as it is within or equal to 16 GB.

Save the .wslconfig file in your $HOME directory.

Sometimes, it would be saved as .wslconfig.txt, you can rename it easily in PowerShell.

mv .wslconfig.txt .wslconfig

Restart your WSL2

After this, if your WSL2 is already running, restart it.

wsl --shutdown

And now open, any distro you have.

wsl -d Debian

Now check how much RAM/memory you have 😄

Reference(s)

• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl-config