Participant

Premiere Pro reports “Adobe Premiere Pro Defaults.kys” is invalid on every clean installation and Beta crashes when opening Keyboard Shortcuts

Forum|Forum|1 month ago
July 11, 2026
5 replies
96 views

System information

* Premiere Pro 26.3 (latest)
* Premiere Pro 26.2 (same issue)
* Premiere Pro Beta (same issue + crash)
* Creative Cloud Desktop (latest)
* macOS Tahoe 26.5.2 (latest)
* MacBook Pro 16” (Nov 2024)
* Apple M4 Max
* 128 GB RAM

Problem

Premiere Pro reports:

“The shortcut key file ‘Adobe Premiere Pro Defaults.kys’ is invalid!”

This happens on every launch, even after a completely clean installation.

Additionally, Premiere Pro Beta crashes immediately when I open Keyboard Shortcuts.

What I already tried

* Completely uninstalled Premiere Pro.
* Reinstalled multiple versions (26.2, 26.3 and Beta).
* Deleted Premiere preferences.
* Deleted keyboard shortcuts.
* Deleted workspaces/layouts.
* Used Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool.
* Installed from scratch again.
* Restored default preferences.
* Tested with completely new preference folders.

Nothing changes.

The application still reports that the default Adobe keyboard shortcut file is invalid, even though it is the original file installed by Premiere.

Expected behavior

Premiere should launch using its default keyboard shortcuts without reporting that its own default .kys file is invalid.

Premiere Beta should not crash when opening Keyboard Shortcuts.

Attachments

I have attached screenshots of:

* the error message,
* the Beta error message.

MyerPj

Community Expert

I’m not a mac guy so anything else would likely be guessing. Do you have a custom file you’ve used? Could try that. Mac seem to have some strange permissions issue, can you check for that? Do you have After Effects installed? Any issues there?. Photoshop would likely not be as helpful, but is that working, etc...

Stan Jones

Community Expert

@focused_code0D45,

See this correct answer:

Stan

Amy the Stuv

Community Manager

Thank you @Stan Jones!

@focused_code0D45 can you confirm if this works for you? Going to System Settings → Keyboard on your Mac and checking that you only have one input under Text?

Keyboard in System Settings with Text Input Circled

MyerPj

Community Expert

Have you tried opening the keyboard file in a text editor. Maybe that’s at fault? Here’s a few lines from the default keyboard shortcuts file in Windows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<PremiereData Version="3">
	<shortcuts Version="5">
		<platform>windows</platform>
		<context.progress Version="1">
			<itemcount>0</itemcount>
		</context.progress>
		<context.capture Version="1">
			<itemcount>11</itemcount>
			<item.7 Version="1">
				<commandname>cmd.capture.record.video</commandname>
				<modifier.shift>false</modifier.shift>
				<modifier.alt>false</modifier.alt>
				<modifier.ctrl>false</modifier.ctrl>
				<virtualkey>2147483734</virtualkey>
			</item.7>
			<item.5 Version="1">
				<commandname>cmd.capture.record</commandname>
				<modifier.shift>false</modifier.shift>
				<modifier.alt>false</modifier.alt>
				<modifier.ctrl>false</modifier.ctrl>
				<virtualkey>2147483719</virtualkey>
			</item.5>

F

focused_code0D45Author

Participant

Thanks. I checked the original Adobe default .kys file directly inside the Premiere application bundle.

macOS identifies it as a valid XML 1.0 document, the structure looks correct, and xmllint --noout reports no XML syntax errors.

The file starts with:

<PremiereData Version="3">
<shortcuts Version="5">
<platform>macintosh</platform>

So the default .kys file itself does not appear to be malformed. Premiere still reports it as invalid.

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