After Effects: Unable to save file

[Matt25522794u5k2]

Hello,

Posting this for future reference/in the hope that it can be resolved before other people lose time. Not sure if this is the place for it, sorry if it isn't!

I found myself unable to save my working file. This has happened to me for the third time in a week:

As I Cmd+S save the file, the little pop-up box that indicates the saving progress —the one with the little blue bar— pops up, but doesn’t fill up completely. It got stuck on a certain percentage (last time 41%, this time 71%), but rather than giving an error message or anything similar, it just seems to abort the saving process and closes the box. It looked as if I had saved it, but I actually hadn't.

This is the same when

– using any of the other saving options.

– trying to package the file.

I could ‘export’/hack a copy of the file by rendering it via Media Encoder.

I tried to remove all unused footage. Then all linked images/video/audio. This seems to bump the percentage of saving up from 71% to 75% strangely enough. Finally, when I deleted all layered Illustrator files (.ai), it managed to save again. These files were connected to an external server, but that connection was stable, and I could locate the files through right clicking > Reveal in Finder.

I am using After Effects 2025, v25.1.0 (Build 68), running on a November 2024 MacBook Pro with Apple M4 Max, using OS Sequoia 15.4.1.

[nishu_kush]

Thanks for creating the detailed post.

Have you ever experienced this with locally saved files? I remember seeing a similar issue, but in that case, the After Effects project file size was over 2 GB. Does your file have such a large file size? If not, my guess is that there is some discrepancy in the connection with the server.

Moving this thread from Bugs to Discussions for troubleshooting.

Thanks,
Nishu

[Peru Bob]

Is there enough free hard drive space?