High GPU load on macOS 26 Tahoe
Laggy performance and high GPU load.
Upon investigation, issue isolated to WindowServer when Adobe Illustrator is running, with or without a document open.
T Y Zheng
shared this idea
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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.
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Joost Egelie
commented
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.
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Joost Egelie
commented
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.
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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. -
Nawneet Kumar
commented
@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.
