Menu bar (File, Edit, etc) often unresponsive on Windows 11, After Effects 23.1. and above

HEY STILL NO SOLUTION OF THIS? ITS BUGGING ME SO BAD. 

I'm currently experiencing this issue on Windows in 25.3. Undocking/closing the character panel as suggested elsewhere in this post does workaround the issue.

I've done a bunch of trouble shooting on the assumption it's a font issue, and my results are outlined below. Unfortunately while I have had some luck resolving the issue temporarily, in all cases it eventually returns, usually after opening any existing project.

I'll note also while AE is freezing up, the entire system becomes effectively unresponsive. Accessing other apps through the task bar or trying to alt-tab doesn't work until AE stops hanging. There is no notable excessive usage of CPU/RAM/Disk/network resources during the hangs.

Once the issue occurs, it stays there for good - even when starting a new, empty project.

• Resetting Windows Font Cache by deleting FNTCACHE.DAT in c:/windows\system32 and rebooting - No change
  • Note: I performed this step after all the below troubleshooting attempts
• Resetting Windows to default fonts - No change
  • Note: Fonts used by Creative Cloud were either ignored by this process, or automatically reinstalled the next time I booted
• Uninstalling one Adobe font - Myriad Pro - which was 'installed' but reported a conflict - Temporarily resolved the problem, re-occured after re-opening After Effects a few times
• Removing three activated but not installed adobe fonts marked as having conflicts (Wingdings, Wingdings 2, Wingdings 3) - No effect
• Removing all activated but not installed Adobe fonts - Temporarily resolved the problem, the fix 'survived' restarting AE five times, but reoccured after opening a project
• Additionally I've tried another Creative Cloud account I have access to in order to rule out an Account issue, but the issue still occurs.

At this point I am confident I have no fonts installed on my system other than default Windows fonts, and the fonts Adobe itself uses.

I did however notice that I only have this issue on one particular workstation. The computer specs of this workstation are: 

• Intel i5-13600k
• 64GB RAM
• Nvidia GTX1070 GPU
  • Studio 572.83 drivers
• Windows 11 24H2 build 26100.4349

The working system has similar but not identical specs:

• Intel i7-13900k
• 32GB Ram
• Nvidia GTX1060 GPU
  • Studio 572.83 drivers
• Windows 11 24H2 build 26100.4349

I have a 3rd workstation with substantially different specifications at home which I'll attempt to replicate this issue on and will update.

Unbelievable, the problem was identified in 2022, yet it persists in 2025. OMG Adobe??? I'm grateful for the one who had the solution and thanks god I've found this post. Character Panel still makes AE lag and unable to work (because AE freezes every time user clicks on the menu bar)

I'm so glad to find this thread! I've been dealing with this lag for what seems like a year now, even in the latest After Effects (25.1.0, Build 51). Undocking or closing Character window does indeed solve the problem. Also, I hadn't realized that the new Properties window includes both Character and Paragraph settings, so I have closed both text windows as they are now considered unnecessary.

This makes me wonder why these two windows are still there since they are unnecessary now, and one of them causes a severe performance issue. Shouldn't they be removed from a future release of AE?

Thanks to those who posted the solution!

I can confirm that this issue still persists with the latest version (24.4.1). The only temporary solution I've found is closing the Character panel.

@Jeff_Bluejade 

Does closing the Character panel fix the issue for you? We haven't seen any new reports on this issue in some time. Can you install the latest version and see if the issue exists? If it doesn't, can you try launching After Effects in Safe Mode with third-party plug-ins disabled? Here's how: https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-discussions/how-to-troubleshoot-startup-issues-in-after-effects-using-the-startup-repair-options/td-p/13866327 

Let us know how it goes.

Thanks,

Nishu

Can confirm that this issue still exists in 24.2.1. Closing the Character Panel still corrects this issue, but it's pretty disappointing that it is still unresolved. Using the Character Panel is a pretty basic need, and it often brings AE to a screeching halt. I'm sometimes seeing a 7-8 second delay for any menu click. 

Just wanted to say I had an issue with AE grinding to a halt anytime I used the top windows menu. After 6 months this thread finally gave me the answer (just closing the Character Panel). This feels like such an inexcusable bug for a company which charges me so so much every month to use its products. One final note, I almost gave up looking through here because of the un-ending negativity of Mylenium. I understand that the more information presented the better but most people coming to these forums are coming because something has gone wrong with the program for the first time and they're just looking for help.

@Hunter_Koerner @Jihad I Am 

What's the exact version of After Effects you're using? Have you updated to the latest version (23.5)?

Let us know.

Thanks,

Nishu

Undocking the charachter tab fixed it for me as well. Thanks Yaman.