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Becki83
Participant
August 19, 2025
Question

Live Preview on Pencil Tool does not work with Surface Pen

  • August 19, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 229 views

I'm really hoping that someone knows of an obscure setting somewhere in Illustrator that will help this to work for me!

I use the pencil tool all the time and was very excited to see the new Live Preview functionality.

I have discovered that this works in a bit of a strange way for me.

I have a Microsoft Surface Book 2 (touchscreen) and a Surface Pen.

The Live Preview works if I use the mousepad, or my finger on the screen, but not if I use the pen on the screen. The same goes for Touch mode in Illustrator which I thought might make a difference.

I've attached my Pen (and Pencil Tool) settings here.

Many thanks!

Becki

    1 reply

    Anubhav M
    Community Manager
    Anubhav MCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    August 19, 2025

    Hello @Becki83,

    I'm sorry to hear about your experience. Could you share more details, like the exact version of Illustrator installed, if this started happening after a recent update, hardware change, along with a small screen recording of the problem, so I can better assist you?

    Looking forward to hearing from you.

    Anubhav

    B
    Becki83Author
    Participant
    August 19, 2025

    Hi, I'm on version 29.7.1 and this is a feature that I believe was only added in that most recent update. There have been no hardware changes, or Windows updates as far as I know. I've attached a video here. First one is using the mousepad, second line is using the touchscreen with my finger and third is using the touchscreen with the pen. (Unfortunately the snipping tool was being really weird so this is the best I got after many attempts!). You can see that the third one does not include the Live Preview.

     

    Harshika Verma
    Community Manager
    Harshika VermaCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    August 26, 2025

    Thank you for sharing the info and recording. We will share this with the product team and get back to you shortly.

     

    Thanks,

    Harshika

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