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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…

Show previous replies

S

SunsetMarketing

Participant

THANK YOU!!! You wouldn't believe it. I re-installed illustrator... 2 times. I zapped the P-Ram 2 times, I started in Safe mode... 2times, I reset the preferences...and 4 hours later... I find your post. I deactivate the dictations and any other items I could think of and voila!!! illustrator is speedy and responsive! THANK YOU!!! You are a brilliant person!I owe you! -Tony E

Monika Gause

Community Expert

You're welcome. May I ask you which other option you turned off? That information might help other people. Did you also turned off the microphone altogether?

E

Emir Demirovic

Participant

Same here, Mojave the very latest iMac and latest update from Adobe Illustrator. Cant work anything on it to the matter that it is unusable.

zahnlinger

Participant

Hello everyone,

i´ve had the same problem...

lastly I fixed it. My solution was that I´ve didn't the latest Wacom update.

Maybe I could help someone.

etnuvo

Participating Frequently

I'm running 23.01 AI cc on a late 2017 27" iMac w/ 4.2ghz i7 and 40gb of DDR4 ram — Radeon Pro 580 / 8gb vram. Not the most robust cpu, but solid. Illustrator AI cs2 ran better on an HP laptop.

Anyhow, Illustrator CC with GPU enabled still runs like a two legged turtle in a mud race. This thing is crawling even if I turn to pixel preview or CPU preview in hopes to degrade what is drawn on screen to speed things up. Outline mode is still slow slow slow... even though they claim to have fixed it. Sad that in late 2018 they still can't get Illustrator to operate efficiently. It's vectors for all sake... 1's and 0's. Ha.

C'mon Team Adobe. Let's get it together... what is going on with the rendering engine. How about some ultra low res preview modes to get this thing moving quickly.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

Is the dictation feature turned off in the Mac OS?

KShinabery212

Community Expert

I have had no issues on my Wacom MobileStudio Pro which is new. Now my Cintiq Companion 2 was running slow and sometimes crashed. But I would imagine that I used up all the memory and it was conflicting on that device. So, I am happy to say no issues since I started using my new device.

G

gogfoxCorrect answer

Inspiring

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…

T

tcul tech

Participant

Thanks so much for posting this!

I have a 2018 MacBook Pro running High Sierra 10.13.6 and Illustrator CC 2018, 22.1 and it was bringing my entire system to its knees just having Illustrator running, let alone trying to do any work or click on an object.

Turning off dictation in the keyboard settings 100% solved it for me and now I can get back to work.

Thanks again!

Srishti Bali

Community Manager

Hi All,

We are very sorry for the performance issues you are facing with Illustrator. Here are few steps which you may try to enhance Illustrator performance:

Improve Illustrator performance on macOS

Improve Illustrator performance on Windows

Hope it helps!

Regards,

Srishti

thomaso31515832

Participating Frequently

I am dumping my Adobe products. it isn't just CC that is causing issues with my Mac. It is also Adobe Acrobat DC. I have a newer MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM and a perfectly adequate SSD drive. I shouldn't have to jump through hoops to get a mainstream app to run on my computer. Time is money, Adobe.

Srishti Bali

Community Manager

Hi Thomas,

We are so sorry to hear about this frustrating experience. I can try to help if you can share a few more details about the issue:

A brief description and workflow of the issue.
OS (exact version of Windows/MAC)
Version of Illustrator

Regards,

Srishti

W

Wizard Status

Participating Frequently

I too have been having major issues with painfully slow open times, or illustrator not responding at all. It's common for me to experience 3-4 minute open times for 16-38mb illustrator docs.

I'm on a 2017 MBP (2.9 GHZ, 16GB) running High Sierra so this seems pretty ridiculous.

KShinabery212

Community Expert

I am having issues with Illustrator too. It is not that is slow or laggy…. but sometimes it freezes. Now this is happening on my one device. I have yet to try it on the other device.