Jenkmeister

After Effects 23.6 and 24.0 Not Starting on MacOS 14/Sonoma

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
October 7, 2023
75 replies
48803 views

Issue

Users upgrading to MacOS Sonoma (version 14) may find that After Effects will not startup and will report errors such as:

After Effects can't continue: internal structure inconsistency (g) ( 25 :: 2 )
After Effects error: globals unborn. ( 21 :: 3 )
After Effects can't continue: unexpected failure during application startup
After Effects can't continue: ... check for permissions or other error messages

Users may also find installed plugins are failing to load or exports from the Render Queue are failing in ways they did not before upgrading to Sonoma.

Resolution

The cause of the issue appears to be Sonoma adjusting the permissions and access to folders that After Effects requires to run. These include:

/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/Plug-ins/7.0/MediaCore
/Users/[Username]/Library/Preferences/Adobe/After Effects/[Version]
/Users/[Username]/Library/Preferences/[com.Adobe.After Effects.23x-24.plist(s)]

To check for the appropriate permissions:

Navigate to /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/Plug-ins/7.0

Right-click on the MediaCore folder and choose Get Info from the context menu.
Open the Sharing & Permissions section and make sure “everyone” has at least Read Only Privilege set.
If the account you are launching After Effects with is listed in the Name column, make sure it has at least the Read Privilege set as well.

Navigate to /Users/[Username]/Library/Preferences/Adobe/After Effects/
- Right-click on the appropriate [Version] folder and choose Get Info from the context menu.
- Ensure Locked is not checked. Uncheck it if necessary.
- Open the Sharing & Permissions section and ensure the account you using to launch After Effects has both the Read & Write Privilege.

If after completing steps 1 & 2 After Effects will still not load, please make a backup of the above folders, then delete the folders at the paths above. Then uninstall and re-install After Effects.

Additional Step, thanks to @Mike Wills Makes

3. Navigate to /Users/[Username]/Library/Preferences/

Find the com.Adobe.After Effects.23*.plist files
Backup a copy of them to a safe location
Delete the files.
Repeat these steps for any com.Adobe.After Effects.24*.plist files

Troubleshooting

Show previous replies

J

jenkmeister17177426

Author

Jenkmeister

@Geert-S Can you open up the Effect Manager for me (Effects -> Manage Effects...) and screen shot the third-party effect list? There are some thoughts this is related to third-party effects that are not signed officially by Apple and that is causing issues.

Do you know if you have any other third-party export encoders either?

Geert-S

Participating Frequently

Thanks for all the effort jenkmeister!

I've done all the aformentioned fixes. Although it appears to help at first, the error reoccurs after a couple of uses.

It seems to appear more often then not, when opening Ae after I've rendered the previous time?

J

jenkmeister17177426

Author

Jenkmeister

As far as we can tell this is an issue with MacOS 14. Depending upon the version of AE you have installed (24.0 or 24.0.1 or 24.0.2), you may see different error messages, but the issue still goes back to MacOS enforcing some sort of permissions or security change that is only affecting some users that is affecting AE's ability to run.

The things we've heard have helped users:

Check permissions on the folders.
Remove third-party plugins, and upgrade plugins if there updates. There seems to be more enforcement of non-signed plugins that the OS does not like.
Wipe the preferences folder completely of older preferences