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I
iolofato
Participant
February 9, 2026
Question

Substance Designer crashes at startup

  • February 9, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 59 views

Hi there,

I didn’t open it since 1 month, but impossible to launch Substance Designer now,  which crashes just after launch opening a report log window. I’m on a Mac M2 Sequoia15.7.3. I though it was maybe du to the last update then I uninstalled Designer, delete preferences, and installed an older versions but, surprise, it doesn’t work neither… I can't understand what's going on, if you have any idea ;-)

JA

    2 replies

    Luca Giarrizzo
    Community Manager
    Luca GiarrizzoCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    February 18, 2026

    Hello ​@iolofato,

     

    My apologies for the delay of our reply. I understand this situation is frustrating and I will do my best to help.

     

    I have looked into the crash reports you have sent, and the crashes occur when loading Python modules included in Designer’s installation.

    Such crashes are usually caused by a conflict with the system’s Python modules. There are a couple of checks that can be done:

    • Open the Terminal app, run the python or python3 commands, then in Python run the import PySide6 command and let me know the result. If the command returns no output, then the import was successful which means there is a PySide6 module on your system that may interfere with Designer’s own PySide6.
    • If you have custom Python modules or tools in a location added to your PYTHONPATH environment variable, open the Terminal app and run these two commands to clear the PYTHONPATH environment variable then run Designer:
    export PYTHONPATH=
    /Applications/Adobe\ Substance\ 3D\ Designer/Adobe\ Substance\ 3D\ Designer.app/Contents/MacOS/Adobe\ Substance\ 3D\ Designer

     

    Thank you for your patience.

    Luca Giarrizzo | Quality Engineer - Substance 3D Designer | Adobe
    I
    iolofatoAuthor
    Participant
    February 18, 2026

    Hi Luca,

     

    First thank you for your answer. I’ve just tested the Python3 command:

    iolofato@Mac-Studio-de-iolofato ~ % Python3

    Python 3.9.6 (default, Apr 30 2025, 02:07:17)

    [Clang 17.0.0 (clang-1700.0.13.5)] on darwin

    Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

    >»

    I don’t know if it helps…

    I
    iolofatoAuthor
    Participant
    February 13, 2026

    😡 To be honest I really wonder why I pay to Adobe… no support, no help, no answer…  and a crashing app, by chance I’ve got also a Pc, Instamat work on both by the way.

    I really feel like this App Communities thing is just an excuse for not having proper customer service. If you have a problem with an Adobe app, you're really in a pickle. But then again, that's no surprise.

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