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Community Manager
jenkmeister17177426Community Manager
Jenkmeister
October 7, 2023

After Effects 23.6 and 24.0 Not Starting on MacOS 14/Sonoma

  • October 7, 2023
  • 75 replies
  • 48802 views

Issue

Users upgrading to MacOS Sonoma (version 14) may find that After Effects will not startup and will report errors such as:

 

  • After Effects can't continue: internal structure inconsistency (g) ( 25 :: 2 )
  • After Effects error: globals unborn. ( 21 :: 3 )
  • After Effects can't continue: unexpected failure during application startup
  • After Effects can't continue: ... check for permissions or other error messages

 

Users may also find installed plugins are failing to load or exports from the Render Queue are failing in ways they did not before upgrading to Sonoma.

 

Resolution

The cause of the issue appears to be Sonoma adjusting the permissions and access to folders that After Effects requires to run. These include:

  • /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/Plug-ins/7.0/MediaCore
  • /Users/[Username]/Library/Preferences/Adobe/After Effects/[Version]
  • /Users/[Username]/Library/Preferences/[com.Adobe.After Effects.23x-24.plist(s)]

 

To check for the appropriate permissions:

 

  1. Navigate to /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/Plug-ins/7.0
  • Right-click on the MediaCore folder and choose Get Info from the context menu.
  • Open the Sharing & Permissions section and make sure “everyone” has at least Read Only Privilege set.
  • If the account you are launching After Effects with is listed in the Name column, make sure it has at least the Read Privilege set as well.

 

  1. Navigate to /Users/[Username]/Library/Preferences/Adobe/After Effects/
    • Right-click on the appropriate [Version] folder and choose Get Info from the context menu.
    • Ensure Locked is not checked. Uncheck it if necessary.
    • Open the Sharing & Permissions section and ensure the account you using to launch After Effects has both the Read & Write Privilege.

 

If after completing steps 1 & 2 After Effects will still not load, please make a backup of the above folders, then delete the folders at the paths above. Then uninstall and re-install After Effects.

 

Additional Step, thanks to @Mike Wills Makes 

 

3. Navigate to /Users/[Username]/Library/Preferences/

  • Find the com.Adobe.After Effects.23*.plist files 
  • Backup a copy of them to a safe location
  • Delete the files. 
  • Repeat these steps for any com.Adobe.After Effects.24*.plist files 

 

    75 replies

    Show previous replies
    M
    Mike Wills Makes
    Participant
    November 17, 2023

    Just an update here: My whole system just bricked again while using AE and i had to do a force shut down. When i booted back up I'm getting the same old error message again. I went back in to the Preferences folder and noticed AE had spawned 3 new *.plist files. I deleted them and After Effects is opening fine now.... @jenkmeister17177426 — I'll send you the 3x .plist files. The bug has to be in one of these, so hopefully this can narrow it down to make it easier to find.

      D
      DanPurdie
      Participant
      November 15, 2023

      SOLUTION - Re download the older After Effects versions that work with Sonoma. 

        Geert-S
        Geert-S
        Participating Frequently
        November 14, 2023

        I've applied @Mike Wills Makes 's fix, by deleting all “com.Adobe.After Effects.23x-24.plist(s)” files, and After Effects seemed to load the preview again. I'll update when anything changes

          Geert-S
          Geert-S
          Participating Frequently
          November 14, 2023

          I'm sad to report that, after working for a full week, the error re-appeared.

           

          Launching in with command + option + shift get's me into After effects, but no preview will load and it crashes on exit.

          (Purging didn't help either)

            J
            Community Manager
            jenkmeister17177426Community ManagerAuthor
            Jenkmeister
            November 7, 2023

            @Mike Wills Makes if you can zip them up and send me a link to download them (you can DM me here in the forums if you want), that'd be great. Thanks!

              M
              Mike Wills Makes
              Participant
              November 6, 2023

              @jenkmeister17177426  I still had them in my trash can. I've just pulled them back out to archive. Happy to send them to you if that helps. Just let me know where.

              Also, for some more context; prior to this fix — I also tried opening AE in safe mode (which worked) and i then i cleared all the caches via the preferences tab. Then tried to reopen AE normally but it still wouldn't work. Also, i don't have any third-party plugins installed, and never have.

                J
                Community Manager
                jenkmeister17177426Community ManagerAuthor
                Jenkmeister
                November 6, 2023

                @Mike Wills Makes Thanks for posting back your solution! Those plist files are primarily the pre-cached data around plugins. By any chance did you save a copy of your files before you deleted them? I'm wondering if there is some data in there that might tell us more. 

                  M
                  Mike Wills Makes
                  Participant
                  November 6, 2023

                  FIXED!
                  MacOS Sonoma 14.1, AE 24.0.2

                   

                  None of the steps from @jenkmeister17177426 's post worked for me. However, i noticed a post in the comments from @MaxLuczynski and followed up by more detail from @ch&h 

                  Fix:

                  Library/Preferences/ (then delete all) com.Adobe.After Effects.23x-24.plist(s)

                    J
                    Community Manager
                    jenkmeister17177426Community ManagerAuthor
                    Jenkmeister
                    November 3, 2023

                    @Geert-S "This made the freshly installed Ae appear to have no "Write to disk"-permissions (which the previous version had) in the system preferences. After enabling writing permissions it seems to be running again."

                     

                    That sounds like the permission issue that we've been trying to sort out. Glad support could help here.

                      Geert-S
                      Geert-S
                      Participating Frequently
                      November 3, 2023

                      I've no 3rd party plugins installed, but I do use Battleaxe's Anubis often?

                       

                      I've contacted Adobe Support and they uninstalled Ae using the Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool and reinstalling.

                       

                      This made the freshly installed Ae appear to have no "Write to disk"-permissions (which the previous version had) in the system preferences. After enabling writing permissions it seems to be running again. I hope this will fix it for the foreseeable future.

                       

                      Strange that it appeared to have the disk permissions ánd read/write permissions before?

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