After Effects makes my MacBook freeze and crash

[c dr c]

For several months now, AfterEffects has made my whole Macbook crash. It freezes the IOS system and then restarts). I work daily with this program, which shuts down every hour or two. Lately, it even corrupts the current AE files I'm working with after crashing. –> "After Effects error: file is damaged ( 33 :: 7)"

I deleted the app and all caches and reinstalled AfterEffects without success.
I also updated the latest IOS and AE versions several times, but the problem continued.

Any hints on what to do and or how to fix it?

Eternal thanks for any help!!

[c dr c]

I now have the same problem with After Effects 2024 (v 24.0.1) on MacBook Pro (OsX: Sonoma 14.1)

If I try to open it, I have this alert message:
"After Effects can't continue: An unexpected error has occurred and After Effects will now shutdown.

Please check you have the appropriate permissions to launch After Effects as well as read/write access to the After Effects preferences folder.

If any other error messages were displayed prior to this, please review, and resolve if possible."

Any help is welcome. 

[hare004]

I also have the same problem now! And I don't know what to do.

[chris_fullam]

Similar problem, AE has crashed twice this week and wont start up until I uninstall AE reinstall AE and restart machine, it is not a sustainable practice. @adobe you need to do better.

[whoddafug]

Same here, 2019 MacBook Pro 16", had to update to Sonoma because AE crashed regularly without warning.
After updating to Sonoma it worked well for three days, now i'm getting the same error.

Disappointing.

[helpmepleaseplease1]

Exact same for me. 

[whoddafug]

For me it helped to nuke the prefs. See steps and explanation: https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-discussions/faq-how-to-reset-trash-preferences-in-after...

[Luca35849115goi3]

Sorry, but what do you exactly mean by "helped"? Do you mean that you had the issue of sudden and continuous restarts on AE V2024, and after deleting the preferences, you no longer had it? Or are the restart issues only decreased but still happen occasionally? Thanks

[whoddafug]

"Helped" in terms of made it possible to finish the project without crashing again. In the meantime i had another project started, which now always goes into kernel panic after a few minutes. Here nuking the prefs did not "help".
So no, problem is not resolved at all.

[Luca35849115goi3]

Well, it's great that so many people are experiencing the same kind of issue with such a widely used program like AE. In this project that keeps giving you trouble, does starting AE in safe mode improve things, or is it always the same?

[IsoBan]

Just for some clarification:  did it *help* or did it totally correct the issue?  

This has been driving me insane for months now.  

[Tarek3589827953fw]

To be honest, you shouldn't use these machines for these tasks. The MacBook platform made with Intel is not able to keep it cool. I had the same issues. Either you get a workstation with proper airflow/liquid or just change to the new M platforms.


Cheers

[whoddafug]

Just take the time and re-read all the posts. This is clearly a software issue on Adobe's side that is causing the shutdowns.

The machines that are mentioned here are absolutely sufficient to handle advanced video editing without crashing. Some (mine) got 64GB RAM and a proper GPU. After Effects has been running properly on those machines for years and other video and 3D software runs very smoothly. Still you come here and say your idea of a fix is to upgrade the hardware, because those machines can't handle it? Come on, that is plain wrong. If anything, your advice is good for another reason: Adobe will not do sh*t to fix this for older machines.

[Oliver TLOF]

Hi everybody,

it is not only Intel. We have multiple machines. All working fine. AMD (Win) Intel (Mac) but on the new M3 Max macbook it just closes. No message no hint. Brand new machine, newest macos, newest adobe afx.

Not really a good sign. For now we have to work on the older machines

[IsoBan]

That’s been my experience as well. The freeze/crash just started happening at some point. Before that, After Effects did fine on my MacBook. I mostly use AE on my MacBook for smaller projects (simple motion graphics, quick lower thirds or endslates, etc)…projects that in the past didn’t particularly tax my laptop. It handled it just fine. Then at some point After Effects began consistently freezing/crashing my MacBook at apparently random times.

[nishu_kush]

Please share more details on what's happening. What are your system specifications (CPU, GPU, RAM, OS version)? Does it happen with all projects? Do you see any error messages or crash reports?

Let us know, we're here to help.

Thanks,

Nishu

[Oliver TLOF]

We have a macbook pro m3 max with 64 GB ram. Sonoma 14.2 - now updating to .4 and then retest. I happens with even the smallest projects. Just closes and is gone.

[IsoBan]

I've got a MacBook Pro 2019, 16-inch, Intel i9, 2.3GHz, 32GB Ram, 2.6GHz AMD Radeon GPU, running the latest MacOS.  

I should note that After Effects worked fine until it suddenly stopped.  I'm not entirely sure exactly *when* it began crashing my Mac because I was using my MacBook only intermittently for minor motion graphics.  But now After Effects will lock up my mac *every time* after about a few minutes of use.  I have to reboot the whole thing.  No messages, no warnings.  I've reinstalled and reinstalled and reinstalled After Effects.  I've searched online and all I've found is a small population of people saying the same thing.  I have a friend with (I think) an M3 processor in his MacBook and he's experienced the same thing.  

For me its been going on for months and now I've stopped trying.  But it would *sure* be nice to get a fix.  

[Luca35849115goi3]

I have the same issue on two MacBook Pro 16, 2019, latest version with Intel, to clarify. AE V 2024 freezes the computer, sending it into kernel panic. I don't know what else to try to resolve it. If needed, I can provide hardware details of the two affected Macs.

[seanw_0819]

Any updates on this at all from anyone? I've been having the same issue with my 2019 MacBook Pro as well for ages now! It seemed like for a while it stopped but now I'm busy again it's crashing and restarting my laptop every 10 mins or so! Near impossible to get client projects finished. After effects reinstalls, preferences wiped, MacBook updated all with no help, any ideas at all welcome 🥲

[Luca35849115goi3]

We are many, as I can see. Is it possible that Adobe can't patch this with an update? And that there still isn't a definitive solution to this problem? If the issue is happening on all or most 2019 Intel machines, what are people supposed to do? Change machines? There must be an alternative, come on...

[Caren5CA3]

I've been having the same issue for what feels like a year now, on busy days it'll crash every 10 minutes like someone mentioned here. I contacted Adobe Support and had multiple assistants try to fix it by remote access, but no luck, it also doesn't help that I can't show them how it crashes, it just freezes out of nowhere and the MacOS restarts after a few minutes, it's unpredictable and I never got any error messages from it, sometimes it'll even crash as soon as I open a project or when I try to move the needle through the composition, so no pattern really to figure out the why. Last time I uninstalled it and tried to get rid of all preference files and it worked for a few weeks, but just now it crashed again and this is sooooooo frustrating!

[sskaz]

Joining the club. 2019 16" MacBook Pro, 64 GB RAM, AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 8 GB VRAM, macOS Ventura 13.6.6, After Effects 24.2. This has been the most stable After Effects machine I’ve ever used in nearly 20 years. Recently my last two large projects have been freezing the entire UI except the mouse cursor, until eventually the OS automatically reboots (via watchdog). Audio (Music.app) continues playing, I can even be on a Teams audio-only call and even continue talking with my colleagues. My project files have been fine, thankfully.

I recently enabled remote access (ssh) to try and salvage it by killing processes, but haven’t been fast enough before watchdog auto-reboots it. I suspect the WindowServer process is crashing. The next time it happens I’ll try killing WindowServer and seeing if I get any luck (killing loginscreen does not help).

My machine is definitely experiencing higher load while working on these past two large projects, not just the complexity of my AE comps (significantly higher than my typical jobs), but OneDrive and fileproviderd both constantly using nearly 100% per processes (likely thanks to tens of thousands of exr files in these jobs). Maybe it’s all related. Unfortunately deadlines are looming and I don’t have time to investigate.

[Andy29937677cwuq]

I was also recently having this issue. I tried a number of things and I think I might have cleared it up by deleting any .plist files within the Mac HD>library>preferences. I was hesitant to share because I'm not currently in a large AE project. Maybe someone else can see if this works for them too?