overheating of MacBook Pro with macOS Tahoe 26

I have had particular heating issues with intunemdm and teams since the upgrade to 26, killing mdm reduces the temp for around 12 hours until it goes nuts again.

We're getting problems across our whole fleet since the upgrade, the battery overheats and then stops charging.

A big pain......

I tried that. It won't work. This is what does work: My 10 month old MacBook Pro has been running so hot since OS26 install that it slows to a snails pace. The issue is that Spotlight Search is consuming all for my CPU. I've considered a reinstall and I looked for ways to disable Spotlight Search as I have never once used it. I could not find a way to disable it but I did find a way to neuter it. In Settings I turned off all of it's search ability, it's ability to search through every aspect of my computer. It was using over 200% of my CPU. Now it uses less than 1%. My Mac runs fast and completes every task with precision and speed, and best of all, my Mac runs very cool. After installing Tahoe my Mac was running hot even in sleep mode. Not so now! Problem solved! Apple needs to allow users to turn off Spotlight Search. It should be the user's choice, not something that is forced on us!

I encountered the same issue and, after hours of research, I discovered that rendering the liquid glass UI is highly demanding on the CPU. I started disabling some of its features, and the first change I made—switching the screen background to a static one—had a significant impact on performance.

OK although I did find changing the two display settings helped a bunch last night, when I worked on my machine for most of the day, I tested both individually to see if any change... with both on I still had some warmth rather than cool like last night, but the fans never came on & wasn't super warm or anything... turned Accessibility>Motion>Reduce Motion option back to OFF because I didn't care for how my screens minimized with it being turned on, and honestly it made no change at all with temperature... so I don't think that feature draws that much... but reducing transparency is very helpful... and even on my iPhone I learned early on before iOS 26, to use similar settings changes to conserve battery life that drained way to fast otherwise, so it does make sense. Gonna continue to test for awhile with the reduce motion setting in the OFF position for awhile and see how it does, if it starts acting up again, I will turn it back on and test again and report back.

Yeah I've been using things with the Reduce Motion setting set to OFF since November and it's been completely fine, doesn't make the machine warm/hot at all, and made no change to my temperature. So I'm thinking Reduce Transparency is the only setting for me that causes an overheating issue from CPU usage... others recommended to turn it to the ON position which made a huge difference for me... Accessibility>Display>Reduce Transparency (toggle to ON).

I have a new update seaking to solve the overheating issue while perserving the funtionality of Spotlight Search. Yesterday I wiped my hard drive and did a fresh install of OS Tahoe, preserving my files etc. via Time Machine. Success! I essentially have a new computer with a pristine operating system. I took off the restraints I placed on Spotlight Search and I've run multiple and compound processess including Spotlight searches and my MacBook is fast, cool and responsive with no applications or processesses gobling up CPU space. It appears that my neutering of Spotlight Search was only a bandaid on the problem and not a real cure.

TURN ON both Accessibility/Display/Reduce Transparency and Accessibility/Motion/Reduce Motion. No need to do anything else.

Okay this happens to me and seem to have to cure than to use the 'Low Power Mode'

I met the same overheating issur after upgrading to Tahoe 26. I found my Macbook pro with M3 pro overheat especially when I watch video through browser in full screen mode. The WindowServer process has a super high CPU usage which is abnormal.

It is possible there are processes running in the background that are using significant resources. Check Activity Monitor, CPU tab, sort by % CPU to see what's running hard.

Activity Monitor User Guide for Mac - Apple Support

It's not a generic issue with macOS Tahoe, my M4 Pro MBP has been running it since launch day and is on 26.0.1, and my system typically looks like this:

fengchu wrote:

I will try the safe mode.

But even the 'brand new' install without any other apps, it's still overheating.

For these "clean installs," did you migrate over from your old account(s)? I am wondering if something could have come over that doesn't play well with MacOS 24.

If, after a "clean install" (format/erase followed by fresh MacOS -- in other words, the Mac is restored to "new out of the box" state), the fans are still running loudly, I would suspect something in the hardware. It could be something low tech like a blocked vent.

I’ve had the same overheating issue and traced it back to WindowServer. I’m still not sure if it’s coming from Adobe or Affinity (my two main design apps), but the GPU only overheats when I use them. I’m on a Mac Mini M4 24/256. I even formatted and reinstalled everything from scratch, yet the GPU overheating problem still persists. :(

As a follow-up, if you want to get back to Sequoia from Tahoe, the link above will get you to the install file for download. That's only the first of several steps.

Below are instructions to install Sequoia by creating a bootable installer (using the file you downloaded) with a USB flash drive.

Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support

i’m running an M3 Max for 2 years and still going fast, Tahoe does cause heating issues. Hopefully they release a fix for it. internal temp increases by around 10-20•C as compared to the last update. Battery level drops quicker as well even though I do the same tasks everyday:

full - stack activities , browsing… etc.