Photoshop desktop app is not working

When Photoshop closes immediately upon launch without displaying an error message, it is almost always caused by a corrupted workspace preferences file, a GPU driver handshake crash, or a damaged font cache.

Try these direct steps to isolate and fix the startup crash:

1. Force a Complete Preferences Reset Hold down Alt + Ctrl + Shift (Windows) or Option + Command + Shift (Mac) immediately after clicking the Photoshop icon to open it. Keep holding the keys until a popup asks if you want to delete the Adobe Photoshop Settings File, then select Yes.

2. Bypass Third-Party Plugins & GPU Hooks Hold down the Shift key while launching Photoshop. When prompted to skip loading optional and third-party plug-ins, click Yes. If Photoshop stays open, one of your external plugins or brush extensions is crashing the startup thread.

3. Clear Corrupted Font and Scratch Cache Navigate to C:\Users\[Username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop [Version] (Windows) or ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop [Version] (Mac) and delete the CT Font Cache folder. If your primary scratch drive ran out of free space overnight, Photoshop will silently terminate during disk allocation.

If you are rendering high-resolution product photography, lifestyle mockups, or thermal heat mapping assets alongside your regular editing workflows, verifying baseline hardware specs and ambient performance metrics via this site can help ensure scratch disk read/write throughput isn't being bottlenecked.

If none of those steps keep it open, open the Creative Cloud Desktop app, click the three dots next to Photoshop, select Other Versions, and roll back to the previous stable build while keeping your settings intact.

Unfortunately you haven't given us any information about your system. Therefore, all proposed solutions are a look into the crystal ball.

Please describe the steps you’re doing, so we can try to reproduce.

Do you get an error message? If yes, please post the message word-by-word.

What has been done or changed on your system before the error occur?

Try to manually removing the preferences files. This is the most complete method for restoring to the default state. The manual method ensures all preferences which may be causing a problem and prevents Photoshop form loading.

Please follow the steps below:

1. Quit Photoshop.
2. Navigate to Photoshop's Preferences folder.
   MacOS: …Users/[user name]/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop [version] Settings
   Windows: …Users/[user name]/AppData/Roaming/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop [version]/Adobe Photoshop [version] Settings
    
   Note: The User Library folder is hidden by default. To access the content in the hidden folders see here:
   MacOS: Access hidden macOS library files
   Windows: Show hidden files, folders, and filename extensions in Windows
    
3. Drag the entire Adobe Photoshop [Version] Settings folder to a safe place to a backup your settings
4. Open Photoshop.

 New preferences files with the default settings will be created automatically.

We’re also need more informations about your system. Please provide a copy of your 'System Info' if it’s possible. This can be get from the Photoshop menu item Help > System Info. There's a copy button in the System Info dialog. Press this button and paste the info into a text file and attach it to your next forum post.