Dropdown menus for tools and text not working on MacOS Big Sur

[JOHN MONDO]

So when I click on a tool like the shape tool, dropdowns to reveal other tools not working. When I try to change a font, the font menu is not coming up. I can cycle through with the up and down arrows but it appears drop down menus are broken. I've tried booting AE with the option key pressed. 

Currently After Effects is unusable for me on MacOS Big Sur. 

Update - I fixed this by turning off displays have different spaces in Mission Control. Seems this is an old bug that was supposed ot be addressed years ago.

[Jesse Kerman]

Thanks — this solved the same issue I was having.

[Bad Mosquito Films]

Could you please explain further how you fixed this.

[anthonye1107]

Hey Bad Mosquito films - Not sure if you figured this out already but I just dealt with this issue and this site here helped me with the Display Spaces on my Mac.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7565972

[Bad Mosquito Films]

Thanks, but no this didn't fix the problem for me.

[Midnight Dogs]

This saved my life I love you 

[odgod]

Six years later, and many version of MacOS and After Effects under the bridge, but I am having a similar error, except no menus are working. So I read this and investigated spaces… and the whole display started showing video errors in every application! Very weird, but it makes me think there's a problem with how the app manages the GPU… which makes very good sense. But for the bug to still be occurring after six year? That's alarming!

[máriom13541361]

I'm having the same issue here, after upgrading my iMac to macOS Monterey.

All the menu dropdowns are broken in AE 22.1.1 and AE 18.4.2

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2019)
macOS Monterey 12.1
3,6 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9
64 GB 2667 MHz DDR4
Radeon Pro 580X 8 GB

[kylie223714154hw8]

just got smae today, account is still working great, no missed payments, but also no drop downmenu's, have to hold right click then tap left click to get it to work but not on every workspace, worked great yesterday, woke this morning wont budge!, uninstalled, also restarted, still shagged Grrrrr

any ideas

[odgod]

I managed to resolve this by switching to the primary workspace on each of my monitors and then just leaving it there. Clearly the feature and the program do not play nice together.

Owen Godfrey (Owen.Godfrey@iiNet.net.au)

[máriom13541361]

Somehow I managed to resolve this issue by right-clicking the AE shortcut in the dock and choosing "Show all Windows".
I will have to repeat the same step the next time I open AE as this does not permanently resolve the issue.
I think the problem is definitely related to macOS monitor and screen management.

[Shivangi_Gupta]

Thanks for sharing the best practices.

-Shivangi