Is After Effects more stable on Mac compared to Windows?

[evelyn_7855]

Hi everyone,

I’ve been working with After Effects on Windows for a while now, but I’m considering switching over to a Mac for my motion graphics projects. I’ve noticed that some people say AE tends to run smoother and crash less often on macOS, while others argue that Windows machines give you more flexibility with hardware and performance.

For those of you who’ve worked on both platforms, what’s been your experience? Do you find After Effects to be more stable on Mac, or is it about the same as Windows once you factor in good hardware?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on performance, render times, plugins compatibility, and overall workflow differences between Mac and PC.

Thanks!

[Peru Bob]

I've moved this from the Using the Community forum (which is the forum for issues using the forums) to the After Effects forum so that proper help can be offered.

Scroll down here to see a list of the forums:
https://community.adobe.com/

[evelyn_7855]

Thanks for sharing your input!

I’m particularly interested in the differences you’ve noticed when it comes to performance benchmarks — things like render/export times, plugin reliability (especially third-party ones), and overall stability when working with larger projects. I keep hearing mixed opinions on whether macOS handles After Effects more efficiently, or if a well-configured Windows workstation ends up being just as solid.

If anyone has experience running the same projects on both platforms, I’d really appreciate hearing about workflow differences you noticed in day-to-day use.

[MarekMularczyk]

Hi,

I've been using Surface Pros for a number of years (different versions) and never had any issues with After Effects.

[evelyn_7855]

I’m curious if anyone here has actually jumped from PC to Mac (or the other way around) and noticed a big difference. Things like how fast renders finish, how smooth previews run, or whether certain plugins behave better on one system over the other.

Do you feel like Macs really crash less, or is it more about having the right specs no matter which OS you’re on? Would love to hear some real experiences.

[MarekMularczyk]

I often use both. When I deliver AE and PR courses for different companies, they often supply their own machines and they're both Macs and PCs and they seem to work the same in terms of performance. But it also depends what you're going to do in AE. There are things like a desktop will normally be more powerful than a laptop for more complex tasks like 3D and tracking.

[Sterphy]

I use both.  I have an m2 pro max and I was impressed by how quick it was working with lots and lots of shape layers for animation/mograph, faster than my PC workstation that's a lot higher spec, but once you start really pushing it the PC comes out on top, because it's still more powerful than a laptop.  It's not really a fair comparison though, obviously.  Personally I'd rather have a top of the line mac than a PC because I spend so much time troubleshooting Windows problems and Finder is way better than Explorer, but from experience I wouldn't say AE is any better or less frustrating on a mac... it's still Adobe at the end of the day!