Skip to main content
A
acrobatty_user
Participant
October 6, 2019
Answered

Acrobat scrolling is incredibly laggy and slow

  • October 6, 2019
  • 34 replies
  • 249197 views

Hello,

 

For the last two years I have had consistent problems with Acrobat Pro DC being extremely slow/stuttery while scrolling, highlighting, commenting on a document. This happens no matter what the size of the PDF is from less than 1 MB to 10+ MB. It appears to be very poorly optimized compared to other professional software titles which all run smoothly on macOS: Word, Excel, Pages, Numbers, etc. I have tried deleting the prefernce files outlined in other topics, which did nothing to alleviate the issue at all.

 

My computer is a relatively powerful: 2016 15-inch MacBook Pro connected to an eGPU with Radeon RX 580 and an LG 4K monitor (more than enough power to edit PDFs). I am running the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Pro DC and macOS Mojave and have never seen these issues alleviated by two years of updates.

 

Given the cost of this software, I would really appreciate some help from Adobe's support team, as well as an indication that they are planning on doing something about what is clearly an egregious lack of concern over glaring optimization issues. Having spoken with other macOS users (I work in I.T.), this is not merely an individual user issue but a broader problem plaguing Adobe Acrobat in general.

 

P. S. I have disabled the Show Online storage while opening and saving files, as suggested in other threads to no avail.

    Correct answer joe---

    What worked for me (based on suggestion from another user here) was to uncheck "Smooth images" in Preferences > Page Display > Rendering.

    34 replies

    Show previous replies
    ls_rbls
    Community Expert
    ls_rblsCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    May 2, 2020

    Hi,

     

    I think this may be resolved by modifying a registry or Plist (lockable preference) for the  rendering speed during scrolling or zooming.  See note taken from the Enterprise Toolkit Preferences Reference:

    .
    bSuperFastDrawing - Specifies whether to use fast, low resolution intermediate representation during scrolling, zooming, etc.

     

    This is found in this link: https://www.adobe.com/devnet-docs/acrobatetk/tools/PrefRef/Windows/AVGeneral.html?zoom_highlight=scrolling

     

    See in my slide below an important observation though:

     

     

    The other issue with non-lockable preferences is that, even if you manage to customize a deployment of Acrobat like this, it may be possible that with every future update this preference will revert to its Superfast Drawing default state, which is always enabled. 

     

    ls_rbls
    Community Expert
    ls_rblsCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    May 2, 2020

    Correction to the information highlighted in my slide above.

     

    Non-Lockable means that this preference can be modifiied by the current user. So that Adobe Acrobat customization wizard idea may or may not work if this is the case.

    V
    verdantunripe
    Participant
    May 2, 2020

    I am (and seemingly tons of other people) are having this problem still. I seriously can't believe that this issue hasn't been addressed. Now I prefer to open all my PDFs in Mac's Preview! Thanks, Adobe for helping me want to use another product.

      D
      defaultyrr9x1o868rd
      Participant
      September 30, 2023

      Seriously, this is about the only working solution.  Nothing here worked.  This is simple and should not be an issue.  It's a reader, this is Adobe.  You should be able to scroll.  

      A
      acrobatty_userAuthor
      Participant
      October 26, 2019

      Well, through my own research I've managed to surmise what the issue is with Adobe Acrobat Pro DC for macOS. In 2006, Adobe added 2D Graphics Acceleration for the Windows version of Acrobat, as outlined by this article. https://techreport.com/news/11433/adobe-reader-gets-gpu-acceleration/

       

      More than 13 years later, Adobe still has not implimented this for macOS, as seen in this user guide:

      https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/viewing-pdfs-viewing-preferences.html

       

      As I stated before, using an annotated PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC causes lag and delays sometimes in excess of 10 seconds, while the document catches up to the input from keyboard and mouse activity. This happens with scrolling, searching, and commenting/hightlighting documents on an almost constant basis. It happens at all document sizes from less than 1 MB all the way up 10 MB PDFs. While watching Activity Monitor in macOS, CPU History shows massive activity, while all of the GPUs in my machine (both internal and eGPU) remain idle.

       

      I can then open that same document in competitive software like PDF Expert and experience perfectly smooth scrolling, commenting, and searching, interacting with the document with ease. While doing this, Activity Monitor confirms the programs utilization of both CPU and GPU functionality, confirming the complete lack of GPU ultilization in Adobe Acrobat.

       

      This is wholely unacceptable for Adobe's flagship product, and I suspect Adobe knows full-well about this but don't want to devote the resources to modernizing Acrobat. They do so while continuing to charge $15 per month for the privledge of their software... far more than there competitors.

       

      Should I even assume these optimizations are coming some day, or should I just switch to competitor? Your blatant disrespect for your customers is to be quite honest, appalling to say the least.

        ls_rbls
        Community Expert
        ls_rblsCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        October 26, 2019

        Hi,

         

        I noticed that at the time of your prior post you mentioned that you updated your Acrobat to the latest.

         

        Yet, during this same month three more updated has been published since 15th of October.

         

        There were security fixes and a lot of bugs fixed , to include support for the latest Catalina version.

          A
          acrobatty_userAuthor
          Participant
          October 26, 2019

          Thank you, but I always check for updates and can confirm I am again using the latest version again, 2019.021.20049. As well, this is by no means a new issue, but one that has persisted for the entire time I have used Acrobat for mac. It has become more noticeable as PDFs have become a large part of my workflow, where as before they were used only on occassion and mostly for reading purposes only.

            Amal.
            Community Manager
            Amal.Community Manager
            Community Manager
            October 7, 2019

            Hi There,

             

            Thanks for reaching out. As described above, you are experiencing issues with Adobe Acrobat DC while scrolling, correct?

             

            What is the version of the application? To check the version please use the help link  - https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/identify-product-version.html

             

            Check for any pending updates and try updating the application to the latest version 19.12.20040. Go to Help > Check for Updates. To know more about the latest version please use the link  - https://www.adobe.com/devnet-docs/acrobatetk/tools/ReleaseNotesDC/index.html

             

            Is this a behavior with a particular file or with any PDF file you try to scroll?

             

            Please try the following preference settings and see if that works for you:

             

            • Go to Edit (Windows), Adobe Reader / Adobe Acrobat DC (Mac) > Preferences > Page Display >Select Single Page Continuous under page layout.
            • Go to Edit (Windows), Adobe Reader / Adobe Acrobat DC (Mac) > Preferences > General > Select Auto-detect for Touch Mode and Scale for screen resolution.

             

             

            Let us know how it goes

             

            Regards

            Amal

              A
              acrobatty_userAuthor
              Participant
              October 7, 2019

              As I stated in my original post, I'm using the latest version which is 2019.012.20040 and this happens with all PDFs files regardless of size.

               

              I do see a slight improvement using Single Page Continuous, however I don't see this as a solution as Enable Scrolling is more much intuitive when trying to read dense scholarly journals. For example, trying to scroll down to the end of a page without it jumping to the next page is near impossible with your interface. More importantly, paragraphs that are spliced by page breaks make it impossible to reference what was said a few sentence ago, if the paragraph is divided by said page break. In layman's terms, I cannot see the end of one page and beginning of the next in this mode, which makes the difficult subject matter of what I'm reading even more arduous.

               

              Do you have a more practical solution? Maybe Adobe could address the core functionality of the Enable Scrolling feature so that it is viable? Perhaps an update that addresses the general performance of Acrobat, since almost every other PDF annotator on the market seems to run smoothly by comparison. Adobe Acrobat offers some core features that make switching to other software impractical, so it would be nice if that $15/month ($180 annually) actually went to optimizing such an expensive product.

                Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
                Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices