Illustrator constantly crashes/freezes during color selection

[Gunnar D.]

I'm using Illustrator on an 2021 M1 Pro MacBook and I'm seriously having issues with Illustrator:

• Illustrator will freeze while selecting colours in the colour selection window. It's unpredictable when it will happen, but sooner or later it will happen, i.e. I may be able to select a couple of colours without issues, but then suddenly the app freezes and I can only force-quit it.
• The app will always crash when I use the "Colour guide" panel to select a colour group.

Both issues occur in existing as well as completely new documents. I am currently using the most up to date version 27.6.1 of Illustrator, but this problem has occurred with all previous versions of Illustrator that I've been using on this Mac since ~ 1 year ago. I'm on MacOS 13.3.1.

I have added two screen recordings that demonstrate how both errors occur in a new document, using a fresh installation of Illustrator. 

Options that I already tried:

• Restarting Illustrator and my Mac.
• Deleting and reinstalling Illustrator.
• Deleting the Illustrator application preferences as suggested here: https://helpx.adobe.com/de/illustrator/kb/troubleshoot-preference-issues.html
• Using the Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool to delete Illustrator and then reinstalling Illustrator as suggested here: https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/kb/cc-cleaner-tool-installation-problems.html

I would be glad if someone could help me with this error or at least has an idea what could be causing this behavior in Illustrator!

Thanks & regards,

Gunnar

[Monika Gause]

How is your color management set up?

[Gunnar D.]

I'm using the standard settings (i.e., as in "fresh Illustrator installation settings"): the general colour management settings are set to "Europe, universal applications", i.e. sRGB IEC61966-2.1 for RGB and Coated FOGRA39 for CMYK. The document that I created was using CMYK colour mode. 

[Monika Gause]

That should not cause issues. Just an aside: "Emulate Illustrator 6" can indeed lead to crashes

Next thing could be to check your graphics card. Can you turn off GPU acceleration in the preferences and see if that helps? Everything will get slower so this is by no means meant as a solution. Just a test.

[Gunnar D.]

The same crashes / app freezes happen if I turn off GPU acceleration in the preferences – just tried it several times. 

[Monika Gause]

Since you already tried everything else it would be best to have Customer Care take a look at it. You can reach out to them via the chat at: https://helpx.adobe.com/support.html 

[Anubhav M]

Hello @Gunnar D.,

Sorry for the delayed response. I hope the problem is resolved by now. If not, kindly follow the steps in this help article (https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/fix-crash-on-launch-issues.html) and let us know your observations.

Also, kindly share the crash report using the steps in this article (https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/crash-next-steps.html) and use the same email account as your community account for quick tracking. We appreciate your time and efforts in resolving this issue.

Looking forward to your response.

Thanks,
Anubhav

[wøøfie]

Just came to post the same issue. It's been going on for awhile now. I just dealt with it hoping a new version would fix things but here we are, several versions later and it's still happening. Were you able to resolve the issue via chat / support email?

[Srishti Bali]

Hi wøøfie,

Sorry to hear about this experience. We do have live chat and phone support, but we can help you here as well. To better assist you, we would need a few more details like:

• Did you try the steps suggested above?
• If not, I would request you to share more details like OS and version of Illustrator. Once we have those details, we can try the suggested steps together and work towards resolving the issue.

Rest assured, we're committed to helping you overcome this hurdle and getting you back on track with your Illustrator experience. Your satisfaction is our top priority, and we'll do everything we can to assist you every step of the way.

Best,

Srishti

[wøøfie]

I did try the steps above with no luck.

• MacOS 14.1.1 (23B81)
• Illy 28.5

[wøøfie]

I've noticed the issue only occurs when using the color palette boxes in the upper left work bar.

[Monika Gause]

I seem to remember that issue.

I don't think you are using the latest version of Sonoma.

There are a lot of issues between Illustrator and Sonoma. Some people can get it to work, some can't.

Are you perhaps using a window manager such as Magnet or Rectangle? Or the app Proofpoint?

[wøøfie]

Correct, Sonoma isn't completely up to date but I've been having this issue for over 6 months.

I do use Moom for window management. Are these kind of apps known to cause issues?

[Monika Gause]

There are known issues with the other 2 I mentioned. I have not yet heard about Moom, but you might want to try out if deactivating solves your problems

[Doh5F9F]

I'm going to try to uninstall moom and see what happens. This probably is so fking annyoing.

[Anshul_Saini]

Hi @Doh5F9F,

We are sorry to hear about your experience. How is it going after uninstalling? If you are still experiencing crashes, please submit the crash report and use the same email account as your community account for quick tracking so we can further investigate the issue.

Also, a small recording demonstrating the issue would be beneficial, along with your system specs. This will help us better understand the problem and work towards a solution.

Thank you!

Best,

Anshul Saini

[Todd@Budge · Accepted solution]

Came here for the same issue and it looks like my windows manager was the culprit as well. I use Better Snap Tool. 

Mac OS Sonoma 14.3

Ai v28.5