Text layers are painfully slow to work with.

Hi gang! So I think I've found ANOTHER workaround for the text issues we all have randomly running into. I've ran into this on and off for YEARS and some of the fixes people have suggested in the past have worked, sometimes they don't and sometimes they work a little, then randomly don't work. Using better fonts, no faux bold etc, all helps.

However, during one project I got nailed by it bad, when just an hour before on a different project everything was fine. So I went into troubleshooting mode because it's been months since I got hit with this.

Here's what I think it is happening. At some point a text element is getting corrupted under the hood somehow. Now as you know, when you create another NEW text element, its default is to use the same settings as the last one. I'm not talking copy and paste, I'm talking about making a whole new one. It remembers the settings from the last one and this corruption is getting passed on to the new element like some hereditary disease.

Changing the text properties does not help, changing the fonts, size etc does not help. The only way to fix is it to use a text element that does not have this corruption to create the new ones from. That way, all future new elements don't get it.

What I did was temporarily launched AE into safe mode and started a new blank project. And created a new text element and boom problem gone and it was using AE default font and settings. I saved that off.

Relaunched AE in normal mode, opened the problem project imported that comp into the it. I copied the text element pasted into a comp with the problem text. I matched the same fonts and settings as the problem text. Deleted the problem text(s) and the issue went away. Then I just kept making new text elements, making sure never to touch the old ones. Sure I had get the settings right again. And in some cases redo animations... however I found that copy and pasting transform keyframes from the infected elements to the new elements did not seem to transfer the corruption.

I was able to fix an entire project this way. No issues at all. Moving forward this is what I did. I always work out of "template" AE project that I create all new projects from it. So I just added this "safe" default text element to a comp. This way I always have a safe one I can copy from and use whenever I run into this issues again.

So far it's been perfect for me. Stupid workaround I know but I hope it made senses and helps someone else out. Hit me up if works for you or confused by my convoluted method. I'd love to see it works for others. Good luck AE friends! - Rob

Have run into this problem doing a credit roll in After Effects 2024 - refresh on any aspect of the text layer takes 15-30 seconds... change font, no good, change faux bold, no good, copy and paste from another app, no good. Remove and manually type fonts - worked for a bit - but there are 800 lines of copy in the roll. I am not manually typing all 800 lines. Is there any work around? I have been at this all day and I am not even half way through ... I updated AE 2024 to newest version - no good. Not sure how to get around this other than painfully sit here and edit each line ... I have to format the font - titles are all caps bold and names are upper/lower medium - font is Montserrat Bold (did not matter if it was Arial, Hevetica or Jimbo's hand made font - they all take the same 15-30 seconds to refresh. MacBook Pro M1 Spring 2022 model running Ventura 13.3. I have one text layer and one null with expression to time out the credit roll. I have done them like this many times in the past - never had this issue.

In case none of that works for you and you're working by copying and pasting text from some other source (in my case Google Docs), then try to 'clean' the text by pasting it first into a txt document so that it loses any additional information. That worked for me.

I came here looking for a solution to a similar problem I WAS having. Like Pasiv, After Effects was lagging when working with text layers, which was odd because the project I was working on was very standard and done on a fairly solid computer. I tried many solutions, but nothing seemed to work until, by chance, I noticed that "Faux Bold" was togged On. Out of curiosity, I switched it off, and just like that, the problem disappeared. Now, my progress/editing/playback is as it should be. Note: I copy/pasted text from another app, which I believe caused the "Faux Bold" toggle to switch on.

My fix seems too easy a fix for it to work for everyone's own, but I wanted to share my experience in hopes that it can solve even a few people's headaches. 

Hello,
I had the same issue and it was driving me crazy, 4s delay until something happened. My solution was to turn off the "bold" button in After Effects (not the typeface), after that it was instant fast again. I hope it works for you too!

I'd like to toss my hat into this as well. Was working on an older PC and then an M1 MacBook Pro for a while and had this issue, but chalked it up to the computers. I now just got a new Mac Studio with an M2-Ultra w/ the 76-core GPU and text layers are STILL moving like trash, even an empty project with just a text layer and a shape layer. I can feel the drag while moving either of them. Hide the text layer and moving the shape laye flies. Tried various fonts does not fix the issue for me. Typical, one of AE's core functionalties is to work with and animate text, and that doesen't function correctly. Shocker...

No, this doesn't work. I've tried changing the font to  and fro and still have the same isssues!! 16" MBP M1 CHIP. Shouldn't be happening!!!

I am having the same problem in 2023

I was having the same problem. M1 Mac. I fixed it by going to the Font Book app, right click in the font and choosing "resolve duplicates". Now everything is fast again!

Hi! Just disable Typekit in Creativecloud settings!