Acrobat Freezes after performing any operations

Question

Hello, I work in IT Support and some users have reported that the Acrobat Reader app freezes when performing any operations, eg adding a signature to a document - the screen goes black and the app becomes unresponsive.

I managed to replicate the issue on my own machine. I try to add a signature to a document and the app becomes completely unresponsive. All Menu functions are greyed out and the only way to close the app is to Force Quit.

I've seen that this issue has been discussed in the Adobe forums many times over the past few years.

I tried many of the suggestions but without any success.

Here's what I've tried:

Uncheck "Use Page cache" and "Smooth Image": under the Page Display category.
Uncheck "Enable hardware rendering for legacy video cards": under the Multimedia section.
Uncheck "Show online storage saving files": in the General tab.
Click "OK": and restart Acrobat to see if the issue is resolved.

I also tried uninstalling/reinstalling Acrobat - still have the same issue.

We are running macOS 15.7 and now macOS 26. We are running the latest version of Acrobat.

Architecture: arm64

Processor: Apple M4

Build: 25.1.20756.0

AGM: 7.1.18

CoolType: 10.0.3

JP2K: 4.0.2.54782

Thank you in advance

Philip_Davies1224 · Accepted Answer

I had the same problem and the Disable GPU fix solved the problem!!!

AnandSri · Answer

Hello @Zego25595501mhdn

I hope you are doing well, and thank you for reaching out. We're sorry for the trouble you had with the Acrobat Reader app.

Please ensure you have the latest version of Acrobat installed on the machine: 25.001.20756 Planned update, Oct 01, 2025. Check for any pending updates by navigating to Menu > Help> Check for Updates. Install the updates, restart the app and the machine, and check if the app still freezes while applying the signature.

Disable GPU Acceleration:

Go to Menu > Preferences > Page Display
Uncheck: “Smooth Line Art”, and “Enhance Thin Lines”
Go to Menu > Preferences > Security (Enhanced)
Uncheck: “Enable Protected Mode at startup” and “Enable Enhanced Security”. Click OK, restart the app, and check.
- Please enable the security settings after the test.

Please create a test user profile with full administrative rights, install Adobe Acrobat Reader, and verify if the app still freezes. Try a clean installation as well, using the Acrobat Cleaner tool in the testing user profile, and check the performance.

If the issue continues, please provide the following information: the current version of the operating system on your device and the logs from the affected machine. To collect the logs, download and run the Log Collector tool. Ensure that you select all log options and attempt to reproduce the issue. After that, close the Log Collector tool; it will generate the logs along with a log ID. Please share this log ID with us for further investigation.

Thanks,

Anand Sri.

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