Participant

Question

Photoshop on Mac OS 26 are causing extremely high GPU usage from the WindowServer process

Forum|Forum|1 month ago
April 19, 2026
9 replies
304 views

I have several M1 Macs—from Mac mini to iMac—and they all have the same issue. Whenever I open Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign, even if I don’t do anything, WindowServer will jump to around 80–90% GPU usage. Once I start working with files, even just opening a single image, the whole system becomes choppy and starts dropping frames, with GPU usage almost maxed out.

But : if I switch the app to full-screen with menu bar mode (press F), the window shadows disappear, GPU usage drops back to normal, and everything runs smoothly—even with large files open. This makes it pretty clear the issue is related to how window shadows are being handled in macOS 26 and how it interacts with Adobe apps.

It’s been months since Adobe 26 came out, and I’ve been waiting for updates to fix this, but even the latest versions still haven’t solved it. At this point, I’m wondering if it’s even fixable.

M1 Macs are not that old—most Mac minis and iMacs from around 2021–2022 are still M1, so they’re definitely not outdated. It shouldn’t be the case that running basic Photoshop functions causes this level of lag. Mac and Adobe are supposed to be a perfect combination.

Even though macOS 26 seems to put more load on the GPU, Apple’s own apps don’t have this issue at all. For example, Final Cut Pro runs large projects smoothly without any problems like this caused by window shadows.

I really hope this gets fixed. Or is it just impossible to solve, meaning the only options are either upgrading to the newest Mac or back to macOS Sequoia?...

S

sputnik6

Participating Frequently

I have the same problem and had opened up my own thread before finding yours. Will follow.

Ged_Traynor

Community Expert

@Gleeful_videography15B9 there’s a similar reported issue here

G

Gleeful_videography15B9

Participant

Hey everyone,

I've been trying to figure out what's wrong with Illustrator and Photoshop for the past months. But the situation is getting unbearable.

I have a MacBook Pro M1 Max and a MacBook Air M4. Both with the same macOS Tahoe version, and the latest Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator versions.

When both are sitting completely idle with nothing open, they're at 0% CPU and 0% GPU load.
Then I open Illustrator. No document. I don't touch anything. Just the app sitting there. I check Activity Monitor and the WindowServer process shows:

on the M1 Max, 0% GPU
on the M4 Air, 20% GPU

The situation gets worse when I open Photoshop at the same time, where
the GPU goes to 50% load for the M4 Air just by doing nothing.
The M1 Max stays at 0%.

Of course when you do actual work in the programs, the GPU load gets even higher, to a point where they get laggy and unbearable to work with. The M1 Max shows no such problem.

I tried the following and nothing worked:

Turning off Animated Zoom
Turning off Real-Time Drawing and Editing
Closing the Libraries panel and the Discover panel
Resetting prefs with Cmd+Option+Shift on launch
A full reinstall of Illustrator and Photoshop
A clean macOS install on the M4 (yes, really)

The only thing that works and brings the GPU back to 0% is putting Illustrator and Photoshop into full screen (by pressing F).

My guess is that Tahoe and Adobe aren't optimized yet for the M4 🤷‍♂️.

Please fix it Adobe.

Sameer K

Community Manager

Hey, all. Thanks for bringing this up. I’ll help you figure this out. On macOS, all GPU compositing routes through WindowServer, making Photoshop's draw calls visible in the Activity Monitor.

In Photoshop’s settings, go to Performance > Uncheck ‘Foreground Composite Caching’ & go to Advanced Settings > Uncheck GPU Compositing and restart Photoshop.

Let me know how it goes. Thanks!
Sameer K

エ

エルガサ

Participating Frequently

What you are referring to is the internal processing within Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. There is no change in GPU usage (the attached image shows Illustrator and Photoshop running with settings that do not utilise the GPU). As GPU usage varies depending on the display mode, this is unrelated to the applications’ internal rendering engines. This difference is likely due to whether or not window shadows are applied to the overall interface.

mig90501573

Participant

I have the same problem on a mac studio m1 max, the GPU starts climbing up to like 85% gpu utilization and the whole system is a stuttering fest. Adobe please fix this, so far updates have not solved the problem

shustovcreates

Participant

I have the same exact issue on my 16 inch MBP M1 Pro. it makes laptop super hot all the time and battery dies 2-3 times as quickly

Ged_Traynor

Community Expert

@shustovcreates a couple of people have reported this issue

shustovcreates

Participant

im sorry. somehow didn't find it, even though I searched for this

shustovcreates

Participant

Issue summary: Photoshop (Illustrator and Indesign too) are constantly using a lot of GPU resources

Product and version: latest available. I guess 27.5

Operating system: Mac OS 26.4, and all minor versions before .4

Steps to reproduce: after I launch Photoshop, my GPU usage goes up to 50-70%. Without even launching any file. Looking into System monitor I see that “windowserver” service is using all the gpu. If I change Photoshop window mode to “Fullscreen” OR minimise window (yellow button) GPU usage drops back to zero. It's no Photoshop only issue but Illustrator and Indesign too. Obviously, if I close those apps GPU usage comes back to 0% too.

Expected result: I expect 0 % GPU usage until I actually use the app, just like it works on Mac OS Sequoia.

Actual result: my GPU usage is constantly hitting 50-70% of gpu usage making my MPB 16 M1 Pro 16 gb hot and have only half of the battery life I normally expect

Attachments (optional): Screenshot below. It shows that gpu usage constantly jumping from 0 to 50-70 % GPU usage

jonaskohl

Participating Frequently

I have the exact same problem with macOS 26.4.1 on an M3 Pro MBP with Illustrator 30.3 and Photoshop 27.5 (both the latest versions as of writing this). I can also reproduce that using fullscreen mode (pressing F) fixes the issue. Having just updated from macOS 15 to 26, this issue only occurs on macOS 26. I feel Adobe needs to release a hotfix for macOS 26 users to address this issue. As it stands, Adobe apps cause ~75% GPU usage all the time, even with no document open. This drains the battery of my MacBook very quickly and also makes it become very hot, in addition to slowing the whole system down to a crawl.

Until this issue is resolved, I have no choice but to switch over to Affinity. If this issue is not addressed in a timely manner (this issue should be of very high priority), I’m afraid I have no other choice but to cancel my Adobe Creative Cloud subscription.

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