After Effects Menu bar not working at all

[solutionboy]

HI there.

This has been an issue that has been heppening more often to me, until today I can't clear it at all. Clicking on anything in the menu bar will just highlight the top level item, with nothing dropping down. Sometimes, the drop down will flash briefly then vanish. I was able to resolve this with an app restart innitially, This then grew to needin g system restart. Now I can't clear it at all. It has also now affected right clicking within the app - nothing happens. This occasionally effects other CC apps as well, but at the moement it has competely rendered AE unusable. 

I have both 2021 & 2020 installed. I need 2021 in place, because you cannot export to Media Encoder in 2022, but that's a whole other story. The menu bar & right clicking isn't working in either version.

The menu bar and right clicks are fine in all other apps. I'm using a magic mouse on MacBook Pro 2019, but the results are the same with a plugin mouse or the trackpad.

At a loss with what to do to be honest. The amount of time I've lost to Adobe problems in the last 2 months is sickening - So many little bugs and issues that soak up work time. This issue has brought things to a standstill though.

Can anyone help? Thanks in advance!

[Rajovo]

Same here, 5k iMac. See my video. AE 2022 literally cannot be used.

[emememememe98]

Also having this issue on AE 2022. Deleted my preferences last night and that fixed it, but now it's back. This is a bug that makes AE completely unusable. It's not just the menu bar, its any drop down menu in the app. 

[nishu_kush]

Hi all,

Sorry for your issue.

Have you tried installing the latest version (22.1.1) of After Effects and see if that helps?

Let us know.

Thanks,

Nishu

[tmgldng]

I'm on 22.1.1 and am still having this issue.

Have checked my creative cloud and this is the most up to date version.

Tried a system restart as well and that hasn't done anything for me.

[Atomickplaygrounds]

Since upgrading from Catalina AE has become almost unusable, couldn't access the menus at all in Monterey. Now in Ventura, CC21 is doing similar with the interface menus.

CC22 and CC23 have other issues too.

If I could I would still using Mojave, because that was stable, but just recently you remove access to install old versions of Adobe on it.

How come that there are no patches to sort this?

[OpticSugar]

I'm also having the same issue.  I'm on a new M1 Max MBP.  I had initially set it up with migration assistant, but I was experiencing this and many other oddities so I thought it would be best to wipe the system, re-install MacOS Monterey, and re-install my apps from scratch.  

Still having this menu issue.  When it happens, the menus usually don't appear, but occasionally, they flash on (like the OP described and like Rajovo's shared video).  If I am patient, I can sometimes outsmart it by clicking or double-clicking and holding until I can get the menus to stay open while holding the mouse down.  This may let me choose a root level option, but I can't open sub-menus.

I'm running After Effects version 22 .1.1 (build 14) on MacOS Monterey 12.1 with a Wacom Inuos Pro (although the problem also occurs with my MBP's trackpad.  Everything was freshly installed from scratch just days ago.

[Kaaos]

Same. 2022 version on mac is useless after last update. Back to 2021.

[coreycreative]

Has ANYONE figured this out!! dont see and answer yet this is a major issue. I have a dealine and AE is unusable 

[touchalifemedia]

SAME HERE PLEASEE FIX ASAP!!

[praitherw6434823]

I have the same issue, thought it was just me

[JonnC]

Same here!!! AE 22.1.1

[MR0]

Same here on macOS 12.2/AE 22.2.1, and occurs since BigSur/AE 22.0.1.
That's was a real nightmare (it renders AE unusable) until i found some tricks to overcome the issue :
1, clean all caches with the freeware Onyx then restart, then reload your project.
Things should be fine until you quit AE and restart it then no more menus again…

2. delete preferences files (not worth it as the bug will re-appear some time later)

3. if you have 2 screens, put your secondary screen off. Then wait a little, it should be temporarily fixed.

This bug occurs only at work on my MBP 16" + external screen, but not on my desktop machine with a single screen at home (hackintosh with same OS/AE/plugins version as my office laptop).

[MR0]

Error on reported OS/AE versions : it's macOS 12.2/AE 22.2.0…

[GlenMcKnight]

Yep same scenario as the above users. Fully stops any work from happening as I can't open files. 

On M1 Pro. 12.2.1
Can't even open the apple menu if after effects is in focus. 

Attached a video to show behavior. 

[nishu_kush]

Hi all,

After Effects engineers are aware of this issue. Please check out the UserVoice link and add your vote. Also, check out the workaround suggested by John.

Let us know how it goes.

Thanks,

Nishu

[The Fez]

had this a lot with previous versions, after searching a lot online i found what works for me .

around 5 clicks through the layouts, click standard, libraries, small screen and back again, that for some reason made me be able to use the bar afterwards.

Hope that works for the moment, it's a horrible bug

[ravis88125312]

Hi All,

I'm using a new Macbook Pro M1 and After Effects CC 2022 and am experiencing this same deeply annoying issue - luckily I'm not on a job at the moment otherwise it would be a bigger problem.

Some plugins ONLY work on versions of AE after 2020 which was why I upgraded top the MacBook Pro.

I tried your suggestion of clicking the Libraries, Layout (!?) and for some bizarre reason this seems to fix the issue temporarily, though I find that I have to click and hold on the touchpad (it will be the same for the Magic Mouse) before the drop-down menu hangs there long enough to make a selection.

Not ideal so please fix this ASAP.

Ravi

[Stefano5C20]

same for me, that solved it. But yeah rerrible bug, please fix asap

[Wildcard49]

That "solved" it for me as well.

[jackg23119511]

Spec: iMac Retina 5K 2020

Hello fellow enfuriated people!

This worked for me. I hope it sorts it for everyone else. I had plugins by AEJuice installed. I deleted these from the 'ScriptUI Panels' folder and restarted AE and it has worked!! 

This is the first time posting on a forum, I hope this at least helped one person out.

Bye

Jack

[Austin5FF5]

Isn't Adobe the worst?  haha.  God I can't wait until I can get away from After Effects.

Anyways, what helped me was to unclick a bunch of scripts from the window bar, even though that was a challenge with the bug, and then restart.  After that I was able to reset my workspace to previous setting.

Hey After Effects team: If you're going to charge us monthly make sure your garbage software works.  Oh. and maybe have an easy to find list of KNOWN bugs from your creative cloud app so we don't have to dig around in Google looking for answers from other lost souls.  Been dealing with this sort of nonsense for as long as I've been using this garbage software for decades.

[smallbot]

Just click to AE icon on the dock and menus will be ok

[Zebadeee]

Clicking on the AE icon in the dock worked for me - menus now appear normally

[blaowskiton]

Worked for me, ty very much!