Inspiring

Question

Illustrator keeps crashing when trying to apply dashes to a stroke

Forum|Forum|8 months ago
June 3, 2025
3 replies
322 views

I'm not entirely sure when it started happening but I can replicate this almost every time. When I work with dashed strokes in Illustrator, I can expect the app to hang almost immediately. I've turned off the GPU acceleration because of other issues (why Adobe can't code to a single spec with Apple Silicon, we'll likely never know) and the issue still persists. I know there has been at least one extremely loathed reset of app preferences followed by days of anger at having to put everything back together the way I prefer it. Nothig has fixed the dashes crashing AI bug yet. Anyone else have this issue with dashes?

I have an M1 Mac Studio with the latest OS and all my Adobe apps are up to date.

asdfasdf

Participant

I have the exactly same issue, with an M1 Mac - it’s just dashed lines.

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @asdfasdf

I’m sorry to hear you’re having similar trouble with Illustrator. Would you mind sharing more details, such as the version of the OS/Illustrator installed, and a brief description of your workflow when this happens, so we can better assist you? Also, please try the suggestions shared in this help article (https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/fix-crash-on-launch-issues.html) and share your observations.

Looking forward to hearing from you.
Anubhav

Monika Gause

Community Expert

I have an M1 Macbook and and M2 Studio. Never had issues with dashes on either of them.

Can you give us some more details about your files and your process?

S

stuart-mccoyAuthor

Inspiring

It's a typical Illustrator file, there is no real magic there. It's also a stroke with a dashed line, no mahgic here either since there's really only one way to do it. Granted there are 4 different panels that will do the same thing and two of them appear to be the culprit here. Not entirely sure why a stroke pop-up in the appearance or properties panel would crash AI but the actual stroke panel doesn't appear to cause the crash.

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @stuart-mccoy,

Could you check if Illustrator behaves this way with specific files, confirm the exact version of the OS/Illustrator installed, and share a small screen recording of your exact workflow, so I can try to replicate this on my end?
Also, try running Illustrator under a different administrator account (macOS) and share your observations.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

Mike Witherell

Community Expert

Hi Stuart,

Do you apply the dashed stroke after drawing the path shape, or do you do so while actively pen tool drawing the path shape? I recommend the former. Also, what is your strategy to protect your preferences when you have to hit the reset? i.e.: Edit > My Settings > Export Settings/Import Settings?

Mike Witherell

S

stuart-mccoyAuthor

Inspiring

After. I think I maye have found the issue though. In an attempt to declutter things a little, I decided to rely on the Appearance and Properties panels for things like strokes. Oddly enough, using the actual stroke panel or the control panel strokes options doesn't appear to cause the crash. Since I don't like travelign all the way up to the control panel (maybe I'll need to get used to it but for now...), I'm going to leave the strokes panel on and docked with my other palettes on the right.

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