The ability to disable AIRobin in Illustrator is now a necessity. Insane memory usage in background.

. Disable Background Saving

Disabling Illustrator’s background save features minimizes AIRobin’s memory usage:

• Open Illustrator.
• Go to Preferences > File Handling & Clipboard.
• Uncheck Save in Background (and Export in Background if available).
• Click OK and restart the application.

2. End the Process Manually

If AIRobin is still spiking your RAM, you can manually terminate it: [1]

• Windows: Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open the Task Manager. Look for AIRobin.exe, right-click it, and select End Task.
• Mac: Press Cmd + Space to open Spotlight and search for Activity Monitor. Search for "AIRobin" in the top right, select the process, and click the "X" (Force Quit) button in the toolbar. 

3. Rename or Delete the Cache

If the process is corrupt and lagging your system continuously, you may need to clear the preference folders: 

• Fully close Illustrator.
• Navigate to your Adobe Preferences folder (e.g., ~/Library/Preferences/Adobe Illustrator on Mac, or Users/[Username]/AppData/Roaming/Adobe/Adobe Illustrator on Windows).
• Rename or move the AIRobin folders (or your main Adobe Illustrator Settings folder) to create a backup, then relaunch.

For a visual breakdown of how to locate and stop obstructive background processes and tool tips in Adobe Illustrator:

This may or may not be relevant to your issue, but I discovered some things while troubleshooting yesterday that I strongly suspect have been a major cause for the sluggishness & memory usage I've been experiencing. These steps have so far mostly sent memory usage back down to normal levels (been less than 24hrs). These may be Mac-specific, and for context I’m on 27.7 but leaving this here in case others are dealing with the same. 

1. Despite having reset preferences multiple times over the last few months & years, and despite having ran Adobe Cleaner + uninstalled + reinstalled all Adobe apps, there were a number of very old/obsolete Adobe files on my system.
   1. Obsolete files in /Users/Shared: This contains the folders: Adobe, AdobeGCData, AdobeGCInfo, NGL. I deleted /Users/Shared/Adobe/NGL/.VU1JUmFuZG9tR3VpZEluY2FybmF0aW9u.dat and /Users/Shared/NGL/.VU1JUmFuZG9tR3VpZA.dat
   2. Obsolete hidden files in ~/Library/Application Support: The "last modified" dates on these ranged from 2022 to 2025. They included: .ACCC_Lock, .ADCS_Lock, .CCH_GrowthSDKHelper_Lock, .CCH_NGLW_Lock, CCH_UpdateNotifier_Lock, .CCH_UPI_Lock, COSY_Lock. I deleted all of these.
2. Despite having granted full disk access to Creative Cloud, Illustrator, Indesign, and Photoshop, it seems Creative Cloud and/or associated apps did not have the permissions they wanted, and so were stuck in some kind of feedback loop where they made continuous failed attempts to reach Adobe servers. I am very opposed to granting so many far-reaching permissions, however I did methodically grant additional permissions to every possible Adobe app to try to resolve these issues. I granted the below permissions to any Adobe apps/services that weren't already added.
   1. Full Disk Access 
   2. App Management 
   3. Local Network