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YellWolfe Film Works LLC
YellWolfe Film Works LLC
Participant
October 30, 2025

After Effects 25 not Launching

  • October 30, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 209 views

 

I’m reaching out for assistance with a persistent launch issue in After Effects on my Apple Silicon Mac.

System Details:

  • macOS: 26.0.1 (Build 25A362)
  • Hardware: Mac14,14 (Apple Silicon, 64 GB RAM)
  • After Effects versions tested: 24.6.8 (2024) and 25.5.0 (2025)
  • Creative Cloud: Current as of October 2025

Issue Summary:
After Effects will not launch. The application hangs immediately after opening — no splash screen appears. I have tried both AE 2024 and AE 2025 with the same result. macOS generates a “hang” diagnostic report rather than a crash. The most recent log includes the event type hang (Duration: ~27 seconds) before the process is terminated.

Troubleshooting Steps Already Taken:

  • Fully uninstalled all Adobe software
  • Ran Adobe Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool
  • Manually deleted all Adobe support, preference, and cache folders
  • Removed all third-party plugins (including MediaCore and Maxon folders)
  • Reset AE preferences and caches
  • Disabled GPU acceleration and tested Rosetta mode
  • Reinstalled both AE 2024 and AE 2025 cleanly

Despite these steps, After Effects remains unresponsive on launch. Other Adobe apps launch normally.

Request:
Could you confirm whether this is a known compatibility issue with macOS 26 (Sequoia) and Apple Silicon, and if so, provide any available patch or workaround? I’m happy to share full diagnostic logs or run any additional tests you recommend.

Thank you for your time and help — this is a critical tool in my workflow.

Best regards,

Doug

 

2 replies

P
Community Manager
Paul UuCommunity Manager
Community Manager
October 30, 2025

Doug,

I may have found one of your events logged into our crash analytics system (it matches your system specs and the general scenario of what is occurring also matches).

It appears that there is a hang happening in Apple's graphic systems frameworks as AE is attempting to start up and display the splash screen. AE is then being terminated by the Mac's own hang detector.

As Nishu asked, have you been able to launch AE successfully on this system previously, and if so, has anything been changed with regards to its hardware or system configuration? Has a 2nd monitor been attached or removed. Has any external display device (Blackmagic, etc.) been added or removed? Has any other software or driver been installed?

If this is a brand new system that is unable to launch AE at all, we will need to dig deeper here. One possiblity would be to check for any available MacOS updates. Another possibility is that there is a corrupt ICC color profile somewhere on this sytem which is somehow causing the OS to hang in this fashion.

Have you attempted to launch Premiere Pro on this system? If so, does it have the same issue as AE?

Paul Uu
AEQE

nishu_kush
Community Manager
nishu_kushCommunity Manager
Community Manager
October 30, 2025

Sorry to hear about the crash.

 

When did the issue start happening? Was After Effects working on this machine before? Have you made any changes to the computer recently? I am assuming you're using the latest version of macOS 26, which is Tahoe (not Sequoia). Is that correct? When you launch After Effects, do you see the background process in Activity Monitor?

Let me know. I am here to help.


Thanks,
Nishu

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