Task Manager’s all tabs (Processes, Performance and Users) will now correctly report the same CPU usage in line with industry standards and third-party apps.

Windows 11’s Task Manager is getting better at displaying CPU usage, which has been a problem for decades but hasn’t been patched until now. But how is it getting better? Didn’t Task Manager count CPU usage correctly? It did, but it also made things confusing. Have you ever noticed that the individual process percentages didn’t add to the total?

In our tests, Windows Latest observed that something looked off even when Task Manager reported nearly 100% CPU usage and showed that the system was struggling. When you manually added up the usage reported by individual processes, it simply didn’t add up to that 100% or any other number most of the time.

This might appear to be a “bug” because it looked like Task Manager wasn’t reporting things accurately. This happened because the Processes page used a unique formula for CPU usage, while the Performance and Users pages used a different, more “industry-standard” formula.

As a result, you might have noticed a mismatch when you compared the total usage of the CPU with the sum of the process usage on Windows 11 and older versions.

With Windows 11 Build 26120.3360, Microsoft says it has “fixed” the problem and rolled out a new change that makes sure CPU usage is the same across all the tabs.

This means everything will now align. You’ll be able to count the processes usage and it will match with the total usage displayed under Processes, Performance, and Users tab.

Windows 11 standardizes Task Manager’s CPU usage calculation

The problem has been fixed because Microsoft is changing how CPU workload is counted to align Task Manager’s reporting with industry standards, including third-party tools, which do a better job of monitoring performance on Windows.

“We are beginning to roll out a change to the way Task Manager calculates CPU utilization for the Processes, Performance, and Users pages. Task Manager will now use the standard metrics to display CPU workload consistently across all pages and aligning with industry standards and third-party tool,” Microsoft noted in a blog post.

Of course, if you want to go back to the old way of counting CPU usage, you can right-click anywhere in the Task Manager and select the legacy option.

As shown in the above screenshot, the “CPU Utility” column on the Details tab (which is off by default) shows the old CPU usage formula.

Will this change be exclusive/limited to preview builds? No, Microsoft will bring it to Windows 11 24H2 and version 23H2 in a few weeks.

What else do you dislike about Task Manager? Let us know in the comments below.

The post Confused by Task Manager’s CPU numbers? Windows 11 is fixing incorrect reporting appeared first on Windows Latest