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valerian7000
Participant
April 7, 2023
Question

Illustrator eats all the space on my hard drive and takes a lot of time to launch (Mac)

  • April 7, 2023
  • 2 replies
  • 6176 views

Hi,

Working on Illustrator has become a real problem for me :

 

First, it takes a lot of time to open... sometimes it takes like 5-6 minutes to launch.

 

Second, Illustrator takes all my disk space when open : I have ≈130go of free space on my hard drive— Illustrator keeps eating it all. Closing the app frees space. Today i had only 60mo left working on a 1920x1920px file with rasterized typography on it. 

 

Here are the things i tried to resolve the problems but nothing worked :

Resetted the preferences

  • Used Adobe Creative Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool and did a clean install
  • Tried to change the scratch disk in Illustrator prefs
  • Checked for problematic fonts
  • Checked for problematic plug-ins (turns out i had no Illustrator plugins installed)
  • Created a new user/admin account on my Mac, in safe mode, installed Illustrator and it did the same

 

I had similar problems with InDesign (hyper slow to launch) but updates seemed to have solved them (at least partially).

 

Here are my specs :

MacBook Pro 15inch 2017

3,1 GHz Intel Core i7 quadcore

Intel HD Graphics 630 1536 Mo + Radeon Pro 560

500go SSD 

Running on macOS Big Sur (11.7.2)

 

Any help appreciated !

Thanks !

 

    2 replies

    Anshul_Saini
    Community Manager
    Anshul_SainiCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    April 18, 2023

    Hi @valerian7000,

     

    I'm sorry to hear that you're having such a frustrating experience with Illustrator. It sounds like you've already tried a lot of troubleshooting steps without success. Thanks for updating macOS, as Bill suggested.

     

    Would you mind sharing a few details so we can further investigate the issue:

    • The exact version of Illustrator install? Does installing an older Illustrator version make any difference?
    • Does a memory issue occur while working on a specific file, or does it happen on a new empty document as well?
    • Where are your files saved (Network Drive/ System HDD/ Shared Folder on System/ External HDD)?
    • When did this start happening? Are there any recent changes made to your system? For example, any antivirus, system updates, plugins, or web extensions installed recently.
    • Is Time Machine backup running in the background? If yes, please pause or disable it and see if that helps.

     

    Also, would you mind resetting Illustrator preferences manually (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfOCy-uehps)

    Rename & backup Illustrator folders from the following location:

    • ~/Library/Preferences/Adobe Illustrator <version> Settings
    • ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Illustrator version number

     

    Let us know how it goes. We'd be looking forward to your response.

     

    Thanks,

    Anshul Saini

    V
    valerian7000Author
    Participant
    April 18, 2023

    Hello @Anshul_Saini 

    thanks for reaching out

     

    • exact version of Illustrator : 27.4 — trying with version 26 but still waiting for the app to launch (it's been 4 minutes now)
    • it does happen when launching the app. no specific file. when the app is launched documents behave normally. it's stuck on "initializing" — then it eats my Mac SSD space.
    • i do not work via network drives. only using external hard drives (a few LaCie Rugged SSDs) and my macbook internal SSD.
    • problems started occuring when i updated to Illustrator 2023 iirc (i usually keep Adobe apps up to date). no antivirus. Firewall is activated on my Mac — it's default settings. Desactivated it didn't help. Also no new apps, extensions etc..
    • no Time Machine running in the background

     

    Already tried to reset prefs, both manually and with shortcuts.

     

    Things i also tried :

     

    • Launching Illustrator while being disconnected from the Internet
    • Using Adobe Creative Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool and did a clean install
    • Checked for problematic fonts
    • Checked for problematic plug-ins (turns out i had no Illustrator plugins installed)
    • Created a new user/admin account on my Mac, in safe mode, installed Illustrator

     

    Just updated to 27.4.1 but still the same

     

    I guess i need to completely wipe my MacBook but i have no time to do this right now.

     

    Thanks,

    valerian7000

    Anshul_Saini
    Community Manager
    Anshul_SainiCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    April 21, 2023

    Hi @valerian7000,

     

    Thank you for sharing detailed information about the issue you are facing with Illustrator. From what you have described, it's possible that the slow performance and SSD space consumption could be due to the age of your MacBook's CPU and SSD. SSDs can slow down with age and usage, especially if they have been in use for a long time or have undergone a high number of read-and-write operations. Adobe Illustrator is a professional application that requires a lot of resources to run smoothly.

     

    You mentioned that you have already tried resetting the preferences, checking for problematic fonts and plug-ins, and even creating a new user/admin account on your Mac in safe mode, but the issue persists. It's possible that a clean installation may help, but since you mentioned that you do not have the time for it right now, you can try upgrading to Ventura first and see if that helps.

     

    Alternatively, you can also reach out to our Adobe Technical Support team for assistance. They can help troubleshoot the issue remotely and provide you with further guidance on resolving this problem.

     

    Also, you may take your Macbook to the Apple service center and get it serviced, as the CPU & other components can degrade over time due to factors such as wear and tear, dust buildup, and aging of components. They can check and suggest if anything needs to be serviced or replaced.

     

    Best regards,
    Anshul Saini

    Bill Silbert
    Community Expert
    Bill SilbertCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    April 7, 2023

    I've encountered similar issues in the past that I was able to fix by updating the OS. Big Sur is two versions back now. Updating to Monterey or Ventura may help with your memory problem. I checked and the MacBook Pro is compatible with Ventura.

    V
    valerian7000Author
    Participant
    April 12, 2023

    Hello Bill,

    Thanks for your reply.

     

    Unfortunately, updating to MacOs Monterey didn't totally save the problem, Illustrator still slow to open & eats a lot of disk space. It just doesn't use as much space as before.

     

    I'll try upgrading to Ventura maybe but i'm afraid the MacOs is not the problem.

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