Severe Interface Lag and Spinning Cursor in After Effects on macOS

Question

Whenever I interact with any part of After Effects—such as opening the Window menu, stopping the preview, starting the preview, selecting a composition, clicking a layer, or even deselecting one—the application briefly freezes, and my Mac cursor changes to the spinning loading (wait) indicator before responding. This delay occurs consistently with nearly every click or action, making the interface feel unresponsive and sluggish.

Additionally, I have a third-party plug-in, FX Console, and whenever I use my assigned shortcut keys to open its search bar, After Effects freezes momentarily, shows the loading cursor, and then nothing appears—the FX Console panel fails to open altogether.

nishu_kush · Answer

Sorry to hear about the issue.

Could you let us know your system specifications (CPU, GPU, RAM, OS version) and the version of After Effects you're using? Is it happening in a specific project or in all of them? Can you try running After Effects in Safe Mode with third-party plug-ins disabled?

Let me know. Moving this thread from Bugs to Discussions for troubleshooting.

Thanks,
Nishu

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