Colors continually changing in Illustrator on macOS

Forum|Forum|5 days ago
April 25, 2026
3 replies
26 views

The colors in my working space constantly change to dull and bright again (they need to be bright and I am in RGB)--I have attached a screen recording. This isn’t new--I previously asked about this, and it’s still a problem. As you can see, the colors are only affected in Illustrator--not on the rest of my screen. Sometimes it happens on it’s own without me scrolling, and as you can see, it definitely does it when I scroll. I have 2 other files open, but they are basically nothing. Extremely frustrating to deal with. Does anyone else have this problem or is it just me? My computer is basically brand new, all my files are on an external drive, and all my software is updated.

Screen Recording 2026-04-25 at 11.58.01 AM.mov

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @kaitlint82815752

I’m sorry to hear about your experience. Would you mind recalibrating your monitor(s) to sRGB (https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/calibrate-your-display-mchlp1109/mac), restarting your computer, and then relaunching Illustrator to see if that helps?

If the problem persists, try pressing the Cmd + E keys on your keyboard, as Ton suggested, and share your observations.

Looking forward to hearing from you.
Anubhav

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

@kaitlint82815752 Yes it is very visible changing. Does it behave like that when you use CPU Preview? You can switch between GPU/CPU Preview with Cmd E

K

kaitlint82815752Author

Known Participant

Like, look at this. This is insanely annoying.

Screen Recording 2026-04-25 at 12.15.58 PM.mov

B

Bobby Henderson

Community Expert

That color shifting behavior is pretty strange. I suspect some kind of glitch is occurring between Adobe Illustrator and the computer’s graphics card/chip set. Have you tried Ton’s suggestion of toggling between GPU Preview and CPU Preview to see if the behavior still continues?

Despite the computer being new, it is pretty common for graphics accelerator cards or chip sets in such systems to have driver updates available. Depending on the make of the computer there may be a variety of pending updates ready to install, everything from firmware for the motherboard to various devices installed on the motherboard.

The only other thing I can think of that could cause flickering like that is if the electrical power running into the computer is not entirely steady. I hope that’s not the case because that wouldn’t be good for the computing hardware.

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