Custom Brushes To Library

[FauxtoGuy]

Primarily a PS user, I'm having issues with AI Custom Brushes interface (AI 28.1)

Instructions I'm seeing online state that custom brushes are saved to the current Doc -NOT the permanent AI library. One video shows how to save brushes to Illustrator, but that all those assets are lost if AI crashes (!) Is this still true? They suggest saving the custom brushes to a specific file instead. This all sounds like overly complex procedures. Has this been updated/streamlined?

Is there not a simple way to create a custom brush & opt to save in a permanent AI library OR the current open file?

[Ton Frederiks]

Custom brushes are always saved in the open file.

If you open that file using the Brush panel menu in another document, you can open it as a Brush library (brush libraries are normal illustrator files).

If you save your brushes from the Brushes panel you can open them as a library from that panel in other documents.

[Kurt Gold]

In addition to what Ton described, each (traditional) library palette can be set to persistent in its palette menu, which means that it will be available in each new document and in existing documents as long as you do not close the library palette.

Another rather convoluted way is to populate brush strokes to cloud libraries as graphic objects. You can then inject them into any document by Alt key dragging them onto the scratch area. Personally I do not like cloud libraries very much for various reasons. Wish they could be displayed as compact as traditional libraries, for example.