@All Can you guys share what is your display setup? Do you have an external monitor? If yes, how many and what resolution? Does reducing the resolution help?

Disabled the Home Screen some time back as it was suggested by someone else before. No difference in performance. Going full-screen mode remains the only way around the absurd GPU load.

Hi Anmol Sud,

This setting was the first thing I disabled when I installed Illustrator, so I can confirm the issue is there without that option. RIght now I have an idle Photoshop in the background doing nothing, but using up 107% CPU and 94% GPU. When I'm in Illustrator the GPU gets overloaded and starts throttling.

Are the new AI functions in the Adobe suite perhaps piggyback-riding on idle processors and GPUs around the world?

I have turned off the Home Screen. I currently have Illustrator open in the background with no documents open - it's consistently using ~20% of the GPU and ~200% (!) of CPU.

I'm on an M1 iMac, which at this point is starting to show its age a little, but those numbers are absurd.

@All Can you guys try to disable the preference "Show The Home Screen When No Documents Are Open" and confirm if you still see the issue? It should be present in Preferences->General.

Anmol Sud
Adobe Illustrator Team

I can confirm the issue is partly an Apple performance issue. The Screenshot app puts extra strain on the GPU when highlighting selected areas in transparent blue., but the rise in use is only around 30% - not the full 100% as Illustrator et al. produce.

As the problems arose only when I accidentally installed Tahoe on the iMac M3 and persist after every version upgrade of either MacOS X or Adobe apps, I think Adobe can address Apple's unasked-for graphical update "Liquid Glass". I've tried shutting off every visual gimmick in the OS but the problems remain, so I think poorly written and inefficient core frameworks may be the culprit. However, users are not in a position to address this with Apple, but Adobe certainly may have the leverage.

After testing on my company’s MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and Mac mini (running macOS 15), I observed varying degrees of change in GPU usage depending on the screen mode. I believe this is simply a matter of whether the difference in machine power affects performance or not.
Given that this issue persists even on macOS 15, I would like Adobe to remove window shadows in Normal mode to reduce the load.

By the way…
If you need to run Illustrator and Photoshop at the same time, using Mission Control to display them on separate desktops can help reduce the load somewhat.
However, it might be more appropriate for Apple to provide a fundamental solution.
After all, even the editing interface of the standard Screenshot.app is driving up GPU usage.

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Yeah. the full-screen method is a good workaround, for now. Its just annoying cos I can no longer see my open files as tabs in full-screen, and if i hit the ESC key more than I need to it exits the full screen.

Now that we can isolate and replicate this issue, lets hope the Adobe and Apple can sort this out; issue present only after Tahoe.

After launching Adobe software, try pressing the ‘F’ key to switch to the mode where the three-colour buttons disappear and the tools are displayed.

Please make sure you’ve enabled the GPU settings, of course.

I hope Adobe will notice this and fix it.

(InDesign has the same problem, but as I can’t change the screen mode, there’s nothing I can do about it.)

Issue is still present.
The workaround to go full screen works.

1) App at launch - GPU load high
2) App with blank file in full screen - GPU load low
3) App with same blank file NOT in full screen - GPU load high

Running Adobe Illustrator V30.3 on Mac Mini M1 with macOS Tahoe 26.5.
Issue present since macOS Tahoe 26.0 beta.
Issue present in Adobe Photoshop as well.

I have this issue too. Not only with Illustrator, Photoshop and Indesign too.

After I open app, not even loading the document, my gpu usage soars up to 70 %. A great note from the commenter - making it full screen fixes this issue. Which isn't the solution , but a viable workaround while working off the battery. Because this behaviour basically cuts my battery life in half. I run latest adobe apps + latest Tahoe release 26.4 on 16 inch MBP M1 Pro 16gb

Slightly off-topic, but wow the difference in performance/frame rate when panning around a document in Full Screen With Menubar mode is remarkable. It's so much smoother.

A very important detail: when I switch Illustrator to Full Screen mode With Menubar, the GPU drops immediately to almost zero (in Dutch: "Weergave > Schermmodus > Volledig scherm met menubalk").
It's Illustrator (mainly, but also the other Creative Cloud apps) which triggers the Apple Windowserver process into giant GPU loads. But only when it's in standard window mode.

This is with Illustrator 30.3 on Mac OS Tahoe 26.3.1

It is still happening. Circumstances are random, but when GPU load runs out to 100% all it takes is hiding all Adobe apps and GPU load drops immediately to about 20%.

Attached picture is the iMac M3 when all apps are idle; only Illustrator and Apple Mail are open. No graphical tasks are being performed. Again, Windowserver is hogging the GPU.

The high load is from running Illustrator and/or Photoshop. It drops immediately after I quit the applications. While running, response time and latency is bad, especially when both Illustrator and Photoshop are running concurrently.

Reproducing steps:

GPU load is always high (like 70% or more) when Illustrator sits idle on screen, when nothing is happening (no drawing).

GPU load may run up to a constant 100%, with temperatures in the iMac above 100ºC, when other Adobe apps are in the background (like InDesign and Photoshop).

GPU load drops immediately when Illustrator is "hidden" (i.e. running, but user interface is not on screen). The GPU load drops further with each next Adobe app being hidden.

When Illustrator is hidden, GPU load drops immediately (iMac M3, only since Tahoe 26.2 was installed).

By the way, Illustrator gets the fans running top-speed on an Intel iMac with Ventura too.

For both computers, there are no significant steps to reproduce the problem; the GPU load seems to shoot up randomly, pertaining until Illustrator is closed, or until minutes of inactivity pass, or when Illustrator is hidden.

Screenshot 1: Activity Monitor showing "WindowServer" having low GPU load (3%) when no Adobe apps open.
Screenshot 2: Activity Monitor showing "WindowServer" having high GPU load (96%) when Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator are running (without files open)
Screenshot 3: iStat Menu showing processor load over time with indication when the Adobe apps are open.

@T Y Zheng, Apologies for the issue you're facing.
Could you please share steps which leads to this high GPU load? Any short video with steps would really help to understand the problem.