An odd red dot has appeared since 14/12/22 update

[AndrewSouthard]

This morning I've acquired a red dot on the top left corner of every artboard. It goes away if I press control or the spacebar but returns when I let go. It doesn't seem to do anything except trigger my OCD... is it some sort of Christmas decoration?

Christmas decoration?

[creative_curiosity1549]

I would assume some Astute Graphics intervention there.

[AndrewSouthard]

No AG updates in the timeframe, but one from Illustrator, hence me leaning towards it being Illustrator. I'll post it In AG also to see if anyone there has it.

[Doug A Roberts]

Which update? 27.1 or a beta?

Any plugins installed that were also updated recently?

[AndrewSouthard]

27.1, I don't beta, too busy 🙂

My only plugins are Astute graphics, but they haven't updated in the timeframe.

[AndrewSouthard]

I seem to have been the only one afflicted, and after a coincidental windows update and restart, the issue is resolved. No one in the AG community "me too"-ed the issue so it's a mystery.

[AndrewSouthard]

Nope, false hope it's intermittent. Two other AG users on Mac are now seeing it so it wasn't a windows thing, so it probably is plugin-related.

[jhbradley610]

I had the same thing on mine. AI 27.0.1 on Win10 with all the AG plugins.

Though it seems to have gone away at the moment. Maybe it'll return, maybe not.

[AndrewSouthard]

AG techs are investigating, but it's such a weird intermittent fault it's hard to track down. I've got a list of diagnostics to run but I haven't seen it since 😀 

[christianherbstreuth]

Same Problem here ... Monterey + AI  27.1

[AndrewSouthard]

Are you an Astute Graphics user too?

[christianherbstreuth]

Yes.

But did no Update in the last Days ...

[AndrewSouthard]

Yeah, mine hadn't updated either. I'm wondering if the Illustrator update clahed with AG where it hadn't previously conflicted. From what I can see it's only a handful of people seeing it. AG techs are looking into it.

[Kurt Gold]

In recent Illustrator versions (for example AI 27.1 on Mac OS 12.5 (without any Astute plugins)) I've sometimes seen similar baubles, but they are less colourful.

In my case they do appear when you create a new document, immediately go to the Brushes palette, select all default brushes (if there are some) and delete them all in one whack.

Then I can sometimes see an untouchable bauble like this one at the top left corner of *one* artboard:

It usually disappears when you save, close and reopen the document.

Nice.

[AndrewSouthard]

Ahhh, so maybe it's not AG. Interesting.

[AndrewSouthard]

It's a different blob, we can make it happen to by selecting a brush tool. My red Christmas version has gone now 😀

[Kuttyjoe]

I was seeing that red dot too.  It appears either in top left or bottom left corner.  It started when I updated to Illustrator 27.1.1.  I just restarted Illustrator and I don't see it now.  But from what I'm reading in the comments it may come back.  I'm also using Astute Graphics plugins.

[AndrewSouthard]

It's almost certainly a clash between Illustrator and AG as everyone who's had a red dot is an AG user. We found an unfilled dot that is down to selecting Illustrator brush tools, but it's a different issue. AG techs are looking at it, but it must be a nightmare as it's so on/off random. I've not seen it since day 1 that drove me mad, since then, nothing. How can you fix what you can't see.

[AndrewSouthard]

Days later, the brain engages. Your bottom left occurrence *might* be interesting for AG diagnostics. One of the troubleshooting steps John @ AG wanted me to try was to move the ruler origin to see if the dot followed, sadly, my dot didn't return (yet), so I haven't been able to test it. All my files are top left origin as I rarely need to change it - can you remember if your bottom left occurrence was on a bottom left ruler origin file?

[Kuttyjoe]

Well, I've never changed the ruler origin in Illustrator.  None of my work requires it.  The rulers are in default position in all of my files.

[AndrewSouthard]

Thanks, I'll pass that on, a negative may be as helpful as a positive.

[AndrewSouthard · Accepted solution]

I have just had this news from AG team, they have found the culprit.

"Late yesterday I discovered the cause of the red dot: our Stylism plugin, when accompanied by some uninitialized variables being set to certain values (apparently the native Brush tool's circular annotation being similar was coincidental). The next build of Stylism will fix this; the way to make the dot go away is just to select the Stylism tool (which can be unselected immediately thereafter)."

[Rene Andritsch]

After installing the latest update from AG I can see this issue is resolved under macOS 12.6 and AI 27.0.1