What is the best version of Illustrator before the AI features? (Mac OS)

Hi mhd6,

Thank you for reaching out, and sorry to hear that new AI features are breaking your workflow. In addition to what our community experts have shared, would you mind sharing more details about the issue you're experiencing with AI features so we can investigate it with the product team?

We want to understand the root cause of the problem and check if anything is broken.

Let us know, and we would be happy to assist you further.

Thanks,

Harshika

To expand on Monika’s point, be aware that Adobe has a support policy where only the last two major versions are available for installation in the Creative Cloud desktop app. So even if you can work out which version has “no AI features” (and by that I think you probably mean “generative AI” features specifically), if it is not one of the two more recent major versions, that policy will deem it too old for installation and it won’t be available.

If you still have a version with “no AI features” installed and it’s too far back to be reinstalled by the Creative Cloud desktop app, then you would have to make sure nothing ever happens to it. Like the system would have to be backed up in a way that it could be fully restored independently of Adobe. It might not be possible to successfully migrate that old version to a new computer; if so, you will have to expect that using that old version will not be possible forever.

​@mhd6 I still kep my old MacBook Pro with Adobe Illustrator 2024 on it (haven’t had any issues), and my new MacBook Pro and PC has 2026.

The AI features did not break anything. 

The last version before AI was 2023 (although it already had Generative Recolor. So if you want no AI whatsoever, it’s 2022. But you cannot get any of those versions.