ProgressBar and PerformanceProgressBar performance issues with IsIndeterminate = true

Abstract

The gist of this post is that if you use the ProgressBar that comes out of the box with the Windows Phone tools or use the PerformanceProgressBar that comes in the Silverlight Toolkit – you should always set its IsIndeterminate property back to false when you are done displaying it to not use up the CPU and drain the battery.

If you are using an older version of the Silverlight Toolkit – you should update to the latest one, because some of the older ones have a bug that will cause the PerformanceProgressBar to use up the CPU cycles even once you switch IsIndeterminate back to false.

Ideally – you should just use the non-Silverlight-rendered, OS-managed ProgressIndicator like this:

<shell:SystemTray.ProgressIndicator>
    <shell:ProgressIndicator
        IsVisible="{Binding IsWaitingForAnOperationToComplete}"
        IsIndeterminate="True" />
</shell:SystemTray.ProgressIndicator>