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Illustrator unusably slow and laggy on macOS

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
June 15, 2018
32 replies
94159 views

Some time in the last year, Illustrator (which previously worked just fine) has become unusably slow and laggy on my 2011 iMac. Anyone out there have solutions or work-arounds?

Performance

Correct answer gogfox

I had the same problem in Illustrator CC 2018 22.1 and MacOS High Sierra 10.13.6.

I have a MacBook Pro 15 inch (2017), Intel i7 2.8 GHz, 16 GB RAM, Radeon Pro 555 2048 MB RAM.

I tried to reinstall without retaining preferences. I tried resetting preferences. Nothing worked.

Strangely enough, for me the solution was disabling the dictation feature of MacOS: Illustrator returned fast.

To confirm this, I tried to re-enable the dictation feature in System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Dictation: Illustrator

became laggy again.

UPDATE: I also found that the bug is known and reported on UserVoice. Here's the link:

Click and touch release problems Illustrator CC 2018 Mac High Sierra - cause dictation software – Adobe Illustrator Feed…

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leopoldo_4821

Participating Frequently

Same, a lot of time to move images, they stick to the mouse and move erratically across the canvas. This issue is incredibly frustrating and time-consuming, as it hampers my workflow and productivity. It is also hard to copy and paste, move images, deletin images, writing a text. I spend 1 hour in an image that before, I make it in 10 minutes.

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Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @leopoldo_4821,

I'm sorry to hear you're having trouble using Illustrator on your computer. Would you mind confirming the exact version of the OS and Illustrator and whether Illustrator behaves this way when you have any other program/plugin open so I can better assist you?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

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Cuto28569207rwaf

Participant

Adobe, seriously?

You are ignoring the fact that AI can't run any good on some Mac machines. I have M2 Max and it is unusable. If disabling dictation mode can improve AI performance - what piece of crap this software is? I am sorry but let's face it - it works horribly and there is no solution from Adobe team, but users only. Are you planning to do anything with that?

Monika Gause

Community Expert

@Cuto28569207rwaf schrieb:

Adobe, seriously?

You are ignoring the fact that AI can't run any good on some Mac machines. I have M2 Max and it is unusable. If disabling dictation mode can improve AI performance - what piece of crap this software is? I am sorry but let's face it - it works horribly and there is no solution from Adobe team, but users only. Are you planning to do anything with that?

If you want to reach out to the developers, please do so at https://illustrator.uservoice.com

This is a user forum, that's the reason why you get mostly replies by users in here.

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joshk25316270

Participating Frequently

Feeling very seen by everyone here with similarly superpowered, expensive and brand new computers and laggy as hell illustrator. I have a 27" iMac, bought in 2021 with 32GB RAM, and a 16" M1 Max macbook pro with 32GB of RAM also. suddenly it's just terribly laggy on both machines. unuseable and completely screwing up my client deadlines.

Something just happened that may improve things for you guys, in the short term. The dictation thing did not work for me unfortunately (it was always off) but I switched it to CPU (instead of GPU), lowered history states to 50 (preferences - performance) and turned off animated zoom (kept real time drawing on though). It's MUCH better. I have smart guides off as well, will report later if having them on can work too.

The zoom doesn't change in real time (like a tiny delay, but didn't inhibit my work the way the lag and slowness does).

Hoping this might be helpful.

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PSK J.C.

Participant

Hi,

I'm using

MacBook Pro, Model Identifier: MacBookPro18,2, Chip: Apple M1 Max,

Total Number of Cores: 10 (8 performance and 2 efficiency)

Memory: 64 GB

System Firmware Version: 8419.41.10

OS Loader Version: 7459.141.1

Illustrator is slower than ever before... I tried everything.. nothing helps.

Don't know what 2 do anymore 😞

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crispe123

Known Participant

Same here.

Some workarounds for me that have improved performance on M1 - turn Real Time Drawing & Editing off if you haven't already. I couldn't move objects that had an effect, transparency mask or stroke profile without it completely chugging before turning this off. And if you're using linked images then embed them - also a night and day difference.

Frustrating to have to go backwards in performance with a brand new machine but these tweaks at least let me use the program without wanting to put my face through the monitor. Good luck!

Srishti Bali

Community Manager

Hi all,

We understand how frustrating the performance issues are. We have consolidated the most popular solutions that help fix these issues. Please check this help article for more details.

If you still need help, feel free to reach out. We'd be happy to help.

Regards,

Srishti

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juan pablol83403958

Participant

Illustrator has become almost impossible to use, I have the latest Macbook Pro (late 2021) with 32GB of memory and the files become extremely laggy after editing for a couple of minutes, the only solution is to close the program and re-open, but I need to do that at least 10 times a day, we are talking 1MB files... And I do have the latest Illustrator update, I have tried Illustrator 2021, but same issue

Dan Rodney

Community Expert

In the Finder, when you get info on the Illustrator app make sure Open using Rosetta is unchecked (if it's checked it won't perform as well).

— Adobe Certified Expert & Instructor at Noble Desktop | Web Developer, Designer, InDesign Scriptor

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juan pablol83403958

Participant

I'm afraid that didn't work out, I still have exactly the same problem. I updated to the latest version and still get the lag after editing any file for about half an hour... It would seem like a memory issue, except I have tons of it

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BigJonV

Participating Frequently

So glad I found this thread. Immediate results on my unusable AI. While I don't work in AI much, I was puzzled when all of my other CC apps worked fine- but AI was at the point where it was unusable. This fix worked immediately.

Will Price

Inspiring

Hello.

I recently updagreded to version 25.0 on my Macbook Pro. It's an unusable laggy pile of sh*te.

Running macOS Catalina 10.15.7, with a 3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7 processor, 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3. Intel Iris 1536 MB.

Yes, my machine is a few years old, but why should I have to drop £3K just to run Illustrator?

Software I've been using since version 5.0, with litle to no issues with performace on any system.

Is anybody else sick of this planned obsolescence? The amount of money I've spend on Apple and Adobe products during my career is enourmous.

Taking the p1ss.

Doug A Roberts

Community Expert

Did you experience this change going from v24 to 25, or an older version?

Will Price

Inspiring

I noticed a deterioation in performance with previous upgrades, but it's fallen off a cliff with this latest version.

It can take 3-4 seconds for tools to select objects. Cursor jumps, unselected objects being moved. Totally unusable.

Gutted.

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songi44764066

Participant

When I turn off the dictation function on the Mac, the slow operation works normally.

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Digital1834

Known Participant

It seems like the 'Turn off Dictation' option worked for a lot of people here - I'm having this same laggy Illustrator problem on my up-to-date Mac, and Dictation is already turned off. The solution that worked for me was going into Illustrator > Preferences > Performance and checking the box labeled 'GPU performance' (and the sub box 'Animated Zoom'). Perhaps this setting is disabled by default? In any case, Illustrator is back to normal for me 🙂 Hope this helps someone out there.

https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/gpu-performance-preview-improvements.html