TV A1625 Using 3× More CPU After tvOS 26 Update

Hi everyone, After updating my Apple TV HD (model A1625) to tvOS 26, I’ve noticed a significant spike in CPU usage—up to 3× higher than before the update. Go from around 40% to 120%

Model: Apple TV HD (A1625) tvOS Version: 26 (stable release) and beta version of 26.1, App downgrade stream due to lack of cpu power

If anyone else is experiencing this, please share your findings or workarounds. Would love to hear from Apple engineers or other developers if this is a known regression or if there’s a recommended fix. Thanks!

Answered by DTS Engineer in 861022022

I’d like to clarify some details of your post. Reading between the lines I believe that:

  • You have an app for tvOS.
  • It implements some some of media streaming.
  • You’re seeing higher CPU usage in your app on tvOS, which affects your stream quality.

Is that right?

If so, I can only presume that you’re streaming video. It’s hard to imagine audio streaming using this much CPU.

What Apple API are you using for this streaming?

Share and Enjoy

Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

Accepted Answer

I’d like to clarify some details of your post. Reading between the lines I believe that:

  • You have an app for tvOS.
  • It implements some some of media streaming.
  • You’re seeing higher CPU usage in your app on tvOS, which affects your stream quality.

Is that right?

If so, I can only presume that you’re streaming video. It’s hard to imagine audio streaming using this much CPU.

What Apple API are you using for this streaming?

Share and Enjoy

Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

Hi, yes your fully correct, its an app for tvOS We are media streaming VOD and live content. and only on the AppleTV A1625, we see thats there is an effect to the stream quality, and the only diffrent i can spot is the larger cpu usage(Other processes) and we have tried build on both the 26 and the 16.4. And we are using the AvPlayer to stream the content.

Thanks for the confirmation.

Media streaming isn’t really my forte, so I’m going to move your thread over to Media Technologies > Streaming to see if someone else can help you over there.

But before I go, one general comment. If exactly the same binary sees a significant performance regression between tvOS 18 and tvOS 26 when running on the same hardware, I think that’s worth filing a bug about. So, do something like this:

  1. In Xcode, choose Product > Archive. This will give you an optimised binary.
  2. Export a Development-signed app.
  3. Install that on an A1625 running tvOS 18.
  4. And on a different A1625 running tvOS 26.
  5. Run your test.
  6. Presuming that you still see the performance problem on tvOS 26, grab a sysdiagnose log on each device [1].
  7. Put all that info into your bug.

If you do file a bug, please post your bug number, just for the record.

Share and Enjoy

Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

[1] Per the advice in our Bug Reporting > Profiles and Logs page.

@DTS Engineer if im just running our app in idle on any overview I can see that the CPU usage in "other Processes" is increased from around 40% before tvOS 26 and after to around 120%. so its seams like there is something going on in the OS there makes this huge increase. I created a task on feedback but there is no response that's why I asked here :) the bug number is : FB20300444.

TV A1625 Using 3× More CPU After tvOS 26 Update
 
 
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