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Simon D E
Simon D E
Inspiring
April 2, 2026
Question

Illustrator crashes when hovering over welcome screen or opening files (macOS 15.7.4)

  • April 2, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 18 views

Illustrator crashes and disappears as soon as I run my cursor over the welcome screen. It also crashes when try to directly open an .ai file.

I’ve tried everything I possibly could find: reset the preferences with shift+option+command, clean re-install, safe mode, trashing preferences folder, looking for CCX Welcome files (there were none). I have NO Wacom files on my Mac. I have run diagnostics, allowed/not allowed it to access other apps data… etc etc etc
I’m running OS 15.7.4 (24G517) but it also use to happen in previous OS.
I lie, you can get it to open eventually and allow you to click the blue “New file” button…. but it can often take in advance of 30 attempts to achieve this.

This has gone on for about a year - often when I finally get it to stay open I’ll often not close it for days on end just to keep it usable. WHAT IS IT I HAVE MISSED?
Any help would be VERY gratefully received.

It may help to include a recent crash report here?:
Thank you :-(

    1 reply

    Abhishek Rao
    Community Manager
    Abhishek RaoCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    April 2, 2026

    Hi ​@Simon D E,

     

    Thank you for sharing the details and the crash report. It would really help if you could also submit the crash via the Adobe crash reporter when it appears, as I’m unable to locate any reports using your community email. Once submitted, please share the email address with me via DM so I can track the logs. You can refer to this guide as well: https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/crash-next-steps.html?linkId=100000357094820

    In the meantime, could you try launching your system in Safe Mode to help isolate any third-party interference and then test Illustrator? Ref: https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/mac-help/mh21245/mac

    If you’re able to launch Illustrator, please go to Preferences, then Devices, disable the Wacom option, relaunch the app, and test again.

    If the issue still persists, please try disabling tablet support for Illustrator using Terminal. Open Terminal and run:
    defaults write com.adobe.illustrator DisableTabletSupport -bool YES

    Then run:
    defaults read com.adobe.illustrator DisableTabletSupport

    If it returns 1, the setting has been applied correctly. After that, restart Illustrator and check if the issue still occurs when moving the cursor or opening files.

    If this resolves the issue, it will confirm that the crash is being triggered by the tablet driver layer.

    Let me know how it goes, and I’ll be happy to assist further.

     

    Looking forward to your update.

    Abhishek

    Simon D E
    Simon D EAuthor
    Inspiring
    April 2, 2026

    Hi Abhishek
    Thank you for your response.
    I firstly tried the tablet disable in Terminal - this didn’t resolve it unfortunately.
    I have submitted the crash report to Adobe with my email address for response. I hope that helps.
    Thank you.

    Abhishek Rao
    Community Manager
    Abhishek RaoCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    April 2, 2026

    Hi ​@Simon D E,

     

    Thanks for the update and for trying the steps. Could you please confirm the exact version of Illustrator you’re using, for example 30.3 or any other version? In the crash .rtf file you shared, I can see 30.3 mentioned, but I’d like to confirm this from your end as well.

    Also, could you please confirm if the crash report was submitted using the same email address as your community account? I’m still unable to locate the logs on my end. If you used a different email, please share that with me via DM so I can track it.

     

    Looking forward to your update.

    Abhishek

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