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Known Participant
February 21, 2024
Question

Illustrator 28.2.0 Freezing when scrolling Fonts

  • February 21, 2024
  • 3 replies
  • 3997 views

When text is highlighted, and I go to change the font and use the scroll bar on the right to scroll down, the program freezes indefinitetly.

 

2021 Macbook Pro M1 running Sonoma macOS 14.1.1.

 

Insanely frustrating. 

This topic has been closed for replies.

3 replies

Community Expert
February 22, 2024

Do you have any "picture fonts" installed? What I mean by that is font files that act as collections of clip art images. Those things can pose a big problem for scrolling through a fonts list if the font styles are being visually rendered.

Then there is the issue of free or free-ish fonts available online at various web sites. Some can be really good (such as certain type families at the Google Fonts site or Font Squirrel). Plenty of others can be poorly authored, leading to problems like application hang-ups when scrolling through the font menu or even making the graphics application crash outright. Generally speaking, commercially sold fonts tend to perform better. If the fonts you bought have technical issues you can often get free updates when the fixes are released. 

joehahiAuthor
Known Participant
February 22, 2024

As far as I know - no - this is a fairly fresh machine for me and I almost exclusively use Adobe Fonts or Google Fonts. 

There are the Emoji fonts that seem to be pre-loaded on my machine though.

 

Please take a look at the comment I made above yours. Recording my screen stops the bug from occuring.

 

Community Expert
February 22, 2024

That's pretty strange. I watched the video you uploaded. The system is hanging before you can scroll the font menu at all. That would make me suspect some kind of software conflict.

 

I'm used to working on Windows machines; one of the first things I would check there is the graphics card driver and if any updates are available. Mac-based systems usually have any updates for graphics chips rolled into OS updates. Another possibility is conflicts with other applications that are open and running in the background. Again, I've seen Illustrator fight with other Windows-based graphics apps. Periphreals that are attached to the computer, such as a Wacom tablet, are another potential source of problems. Drivers for those need to be updated or even rolled back if the current driver is buggy.

Ton Frederiks
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 21, 2024

Does turning Off: Preferences > Type > Enable Missing Glyph Protection make a difference?

joehahiAuthor
Known Participant
February 22, 2024

No, It didn't. 

 

Something very interesting is occuring though. I used the MacOs Screenshot App to record the bug in action. However - when recording my screen, the bug does NOT happen. I tested this multiple times. Talk about the observer effect...

 

In order to capture the bug, I used my phone to record. I tested this multiple times. I'm attaching both videos below.

Ton Frederiks
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 22, 2024

That is indeed strange, no idea why recording your screen prevents the problem from happening.

It is not a good idea to keep recording your screen when working in Illustrator 😉

Maybe you can contact Adobe support, they can look into your system:

 https://helpx.adobe.com/contact.html?rghtup=autoOpen

Monika Gause
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 21, 2024

Always on the same font? If so, try and uninstall it.

Are you using font management?

joehahiAuthor
Known Participant
February 22, 2024

As far as I can tell this is not related to whatever font is currently being used before I attempt to change it. I am unable to change it as the program freezes before I can scroll and select and new font.

Monika Gause
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 22, 2024

Uninstall all your custom fonts and then add them back to find out which one is causing it. This is not a general Illustrator issue.