All my custom actions are gone - only default actions show

Forum|Forum|1 day ago
April 25, 2026
2 replies
71 views

This morning when I started Photoshop all my actions were suddenly gone. In the action panel there is only a group called “default actions”. I used it yesterday and my actions were all there. When checking in Creative Cloud Desktop it says I updated to Photoshop v27.5 21 days ago - so that cannot be the explanation.

I have searched my desktop and there are no atn-files later than the backup I created a week ago (and I have made important changes since then).

Can anyone explain what may have happened and if there is anything I can do in order to get my Actions back (as they were per yesterday, not the older backup)?

Yesterday I installed Premiere and worked a bit with it (it crashed), but cannot see how that would affect my Photoshop actions.

Correct answer Stephen Marsh

I wrote a blogpost on this all too common issue:

https://prepression.blogspot.com/2017/01/photoshop-custom-action-file-backup.html

D Fosse

Community Expert

This is such a common complaint that I tend to agree - there should be a more up front option to save actions (and brushes) in a safe place, away from the volatile status as part of the general preferences.

As long as you know how actions are stored and handled, this isn’t a problem. You’ll know why you need to save them out. But you have to know about it, and you can’t expect that from a new/inexperienced user.

Stephen Marsh

Community Expert

@D Fosse

I proposed something similar here a couple of years ago:

D Fosse

Community Expert

OK, now you have 5 :-)

Stephen Marsh

Correct answer

Community Expert

I wrote a blogpost on this all too common issue:

https://prepression.blogspot.com/2017/01/photoshop-custom-action-file-backup.html

C

Chris201ChrisAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks!

It seems almost incredibly that this manual step is needed in a tool as Photoshop. The problem for me is that I tend to make changes to my actions continuously and don’t remember to resave a backup every single time.

I have found that the quickest way to save my action is to select all sets in the Action panel (collapsing the sets, clicking on the first, then shift click on the bottom), click on the Actions menu and select Save Actions. I have opted to save these in my standard backup folder as this is in Dropbox so works as a proper backup and also a good way to share between my laptop and desktop. It takes less than a minute to save, the problem is how to remember it...

Stephen Marsh

Community Expert

@Chris201Chris

Loaded .atn files or newly created and unsaved action sets are temporarily stored in the Actions Palette presets file (Actions Palette.psp). This file should be considered temporary and may be subject to corruption or loss, which is why making an explicit save to .atn file for each individual action set is strongly advised.

An automated back-up of the Actions Palette.psp file can be created on the Mac OS using Apple Automator or AppleScript, while on MS Windows an xcopy or robocopy command can be placed into a batch script and regularly run by a scheduled task. A Photoshop automation run by the Script Events Manager could also create a backup when starting Photoshop.

I would still advise that you just get in the habit of manually saving to .atn file whenever you update it.

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