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BrianLevin
Known Participant
January 16, 2026

Keystrokes are not registering consistently

  • January 16, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 76 views

After Effects version 25.6.0

MacOS 26.1

 

While using After Effects, and only After Effects, I find that every few keystrokes is ignored by the program. It happens everywhere, when renaming layers, when typing in timecode, when typing text into a text box.

 

Goes without saying the expected behavior is that... that doesn't happen.

 

Here's an example best I could show it with screencapturing software. You can see me start typing and I enabled keystrokes and you can see clearly that I typed several characters towards the end and it completely ignored those characters that I typed. This isn't unique to text boxes, it happens everywhere in the program. When typing in fonts, when renaming folders in the project panel, when typing in timecode, renaming layers in the timeline, you name it, this is happening all the time.

 

Video on Dropbox 

2 replies

nishu_kush
Legend
January 21, 2026

Hi Brian,

 

We're here to help. Can you try running After Effects in Safe Mode with third-party plug-ins disabled?

Let me know how it goes.


Thanks,
Nishu

BrianLevin
Known Participant
January 21, 2026
Unsurprisingly this definitely helped, I typed out a lengthy text box and I
also was able to type into the names of folders, change layer names, and
despite running in Safe Mode the VideoCopilot Console was still working and
I called up several effects without issue.

So yes, more than likely it's something with my plugins or third party
effects. Is there a way I can generate a list of what I have and post it so
we can try to figure out which one it is, or maybe there is info that Adobe
is aware of certain effects causing certain issues?

--
* Brian Levin*
Founder | Editor
847-917-7368
BOOK TIME ON MY CALENDAR HERE <>
brian@forgeanddiscover.com
Community Expert
January 17, 2026

Have you tried a different keyboard?

BrianLevin
Known Participant
January 17, 2026

I should note I can reproduce this on my laptop as well. The keyboard is a
wired standard Mac keyboard, no adapters, directly wired. You can see the
keystrokes being typed in my video and then simply being ignored inside of
After Effects, and this problem is strictly isolated to After Effects, and
especially to this version of it. It hasn’t been a problem in the past.

* Brian Levin*
Founder | Editor
Personal info removed by Mod.