AE crashes on every project

Forum|Forum|9 months ago
June 16, 2025
2 replies
516 views

After effects crashes on both old and new projects. It started doing this problem about a month ago, before that, everything worked fine. I work on Imac 2020, intel i7 with 40 gigs of ram and external disks (HDD SSD). I tried to solve the problem by switching from 2023 to 2025 and also changed OS from Big Sour to Sequoia, but the problem is still there.

Crash

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

Try creating a temporary macOS user account for troubleshooting.

I would also run Apple hardware diagnostics.

Based on where you are at with troubleshooting, I would take the time to install macOS (Monterey 13, Sonoma 14, or Sequoia 15) on an external boot drive (a 128GB USB-C thumb drive will work) and only Creative Cloud Desktop and After Effects to see if that works as expected..

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defaultkdtc8lyzvvzhAuthor

Participating Frequently

Hi Warren, sorry to respond so late to your kind advice. I have not done what you propose. The problem occurred with AE version 2023 with OS Bigsour, I simply loaded the project I had worked on the day before and it crashed. Hoping to fix it I switched to Sequoia and AE 2025 but no dice, AE keeps crashing even in safe mode. I checked the components on my imac and apparently there is no problem. Looking around on the web it seems that I am not the only one with this problem and there is no real solution, especially from Adobe.

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

Sorry to hear that you are still having trouble.

I would try the following in this order:

a. Reset the preferences. Start a new project and then use File > Import to import an existing project into the new project. Save with a descriptive name next to the project that's been crashing. See if After Effects works as expected.

b. Create an extrnal boot drive with macOS, Creative Cloud Desktop, and After Effects.

nishu_kush

Legend

I see! Sorry to hear about the crash.

Is there a specific action/command that triggers the crash? Are there any error messages or crash reports? Can you try running After Effects in Safe Mode and see if that brings any change?

Let me know.

Thanks,
Nishu

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defaultkdtc8lyzvvzhAuthor

Participating Frequently

Hi. No, there is no particular action that triggers the crash. On AE2023 “'Generate recovery project”' appeared but did not advance and I was forced to close the application. On AE2025 it crashes directly. I have already tried in both cases to open AE in safe mode, it does not work.

Ishan Y

Inspiring

Thanks for clarifying. Do you see this issue with projects that use specific source files, or does the app crash even in projects without imported media? If you're working with source files, are they saved on an external drive? Please also let me know if you're using cloud backup like OneDrive or iCloud.

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