Philippe Blanc
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Hello,
I would like to report what appears to be a WindowServer / Adobe rendering issue on macOS Tahoe.
System
* MacBook Pro 16” M1 Max
* macOS Tahoe 26.5.2 (also reproduced on 26.5.1)
* External 4K monitor (60 Hz) AND internal display
* Latest versions of Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesignSymptoms
The issue is not caused by Illustrator CPU usage.
Instead, WindowServer continuously uses a very large amount of GPU while any Adobe window is visible.
CPU usage of Illustrator remains very low.
What I observed
* Opening Illustrator with no document at all immediately increases WindowServer GPU usage.
* Photoshop and InDesign show exactly the same behaviour.
* GPU usage is proportional to the visible surface area of the Adobe window.
* Making the window smaller reduces GPU usage.
* Moving part of the window outside the screen also reduces GPU usage proportionally.
* Minimizing the window (⌘M) immediately drops GPU usage to almost zero.
* Hiding the application (⌘H) also drops GPU usage to almost zero.
* Closing the application immediately returns GPU usage to idle.Interesting finding
Pressing F in Illustrator (cycling through screen modes) dramatically reduces GPU usage.
Simply hiding the tool panels (Tab) does not change GPU usage significantly.
This suggests the issue is related to the window rendering/compositing rather than document rendering.
Additional information
* The problem occurs even with no document open.
* It occurs with the internal display only.
* The external monitor is not the root cause (only increases the workload proportionally).
* Updating to macOS 26.5.2 slightly improved GPU usage but did not solve the issue.It seems WindowServer continuously redraws Adobe application windows while they are visible.
Has Adobe been able to reproduce this behaviour?
Philippe Blanc
supported this idea
·
I can confirm this issue on my setup.
Configuration:
* MacBook Pro 16” M1 Max (64 GB)
* macOS Tahoe 26.5.2 (also reproduced on 26.5.1)
* Latest versions of Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign
After a lot of testing, I found some interesting details that may help reproduce the problem.
What I observed
* The process consuming GPU is WindowServer, not Illustrator itself.
* Illustrator CPU usage remains very low.
* The issue is not document-related: it also happens with no document open.
* Photoshop and InDesign show the same behaviour.
* GPU usage is directly proportional to the visible area of the Adobe window.
* Reducing the window size reduces GPU usage.
* Moving part of the window outside the screen also reduces GPU usage proportionally.
* Minimizing the window (⌘M) or hiding the application (⌘H) immediately drops GPU usage to almost zero.
* Hiding all panels with Tab has almost no effect.
* However, pressing F to switch Illustrator’s screen mode immediately reduces GPU usage to a normal level.
This strongly suggests the issue is related to WindowServer compositing the Adobe application window, rather than document rendering or GPU calculations inside Illustrator.
Updating from macOS 26.5.1 to 26.5.2 slightly reduced the GPU usage on my machine, but the issue is still present.
I also opened a more detailed report with additional observations and tests:
https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/51457714-very-high-windowserver-gpu-usage-on-macos-tahoe-wh
Hopefully this additional information helps reproduce the problem.