illustrator crashing/non responsive (2022 and older versions)

Question

for the past 36 hours, I haven't been able to open illustrator (the app itself, or files in general) without getting a spinning wheel, the app becoming non-responsive, and me having to force quit.

This started happening prior to me updating my mac (2016 15-inch MacBook pro, 16 GB ram, with only about half of my storage used) so I assumed updating it would fix the issue. I updated to Monterey 12.3.1 yesterday and the issue still keeps happening. I've attempted shutting down & restarting my computer, uninstalling and re-installing the latest version of illustrator (as of today), signing out of Adobe CC on my device, and installing older versions of illustrator to see if it would be more compatible with Monterey and nothing seems to work.

I've been seeing responses to similar posts saying this could be fixed in illustrator preferences (?), but I can't even open the app itself without the spinning wheel starting immediately, therefore I can't even access my settings because it becomes unresponsive ASAP. The rest of my Adobe CC is working fine with all apps being up-to-date, it just seems to be an illustrator issue.

Any help or pointing me in the right direction to solve the issue is greatly appreciated!! Thank you!

Anubhav M · Answer

Hello @defaultngps45odarmk,

Sorry to hear about the experience. I hope the suggestions made by Monika helped resolve the problem. If not, you may try resetting preferences manually and see if that helps resolve the issue:

• Close all Adobe applications.
• Go to the following locations
• ~/Library/Caches
• ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe
• ~/Library/Preferences
• Rename Adobe Illustrator, com.adobe.illustrator and Adobe Illustrator 26 Settings folders to Adobe Illustrator.old, com.adobe.illustrator.old and Adobe Illustrator 26 Settings.old
• Launch Illustrator from the Creative Cloud.

Note: Location starting with this "~" sign indicates the User Library, which is hidden. So, you need to copy & paste the exact path in spotlight search or from Finder Menu > Go > Go to Folder > Paste the location in the dialog box like this:

Disclaimer: Please note that renaming preferences folders will remove all the custom settings, and Illustrator will
launch with default settings. You can also take a backup of the folders in case you want to. The location is mentioned above.

Also, you may try running the app in Safe Mode (macOS) & Root account (macOS) and share your observations with us.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,

Anubhav

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