Help menu search (in macOS) beachballs immediately every time

In macOS, in every app, in the Help menu, there's a search field to find a menu command if you don't know where it is.

In other Adobe apps (Photoshop, InDesign) this menu works great. In Illustrator, it beachballs (brings up the spinning rainbow wheel and delays for several seconds) every time I use it.

Seems like this is a recent change. I wonder if this is due to the humongous font menu that I think (?) is also newish. Disabling in-menu font previews helps but doesn't eliminate the problem.

My machine is plenty capable with great specs, so that's not the issue.

I've already tried resetting Illustrator prefs. No change.

Anyone else having this issue?