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J
Jana90
Participant
April 3, 2021
Answered

Illustrator not working on new Apple Mac Pro M1 Chip

  • April 3, 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 5060 views

Hi all, I know there a lots of questions like this out here but I still haven't figured out on how to make Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop work on a Macbook with the M1 Chip. 

 

Indesign and Lightroom both works fine for me, but Illustrator and Photoshop won't even launch. I tried uninstalling and installing the apps new, I am on the latest apple update (Big Sur 11.2.3), restarted computer etc. but the two apps still won't launch.

 

Any idea what else I can try?

Correct answer ZooN_

Hi @Jana90 !

 

As far as I know you cannot download Rosetta 2 directly from Apple as it is more of a framework that gets installed automatically on-the-fly once you try and run an app with only Intel binary code available in it (you still need to click on the Install button in the pop-up dialog).

 

An easy way to check if you have Rosetta 2 installed is to see if you have any apps that are Intel only. If they run fine, then you definitely have Rosetta 2 installed on your system.

(You can check the application kind in the info panel; Intel apps run on Rosetta 2 and Universal apps contain both Intel and native M1 binaries.)

 

Having said that, the latest version of Photoshop should still launch on your Mac as it is already a Universal 2 binary, ie. it doesn't need Rosetta 2 at all to launch.

 

Have you tried using the Adobe Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool? It is very thorough but it will reset all your Adobe apps settings so only do it if you're happy to start from scratch. I know it solved most of the issues I have had with Illustrator.

 

As for the official support channels, you can try on helpx.adobe.com and there is a chat window at the bottom right corner of the page.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Cheers

Z

1 reply

Z
ZooN_
Inspiring
April 4, 2021

Hi Jana!

 

I am using both Illustrator and Photoshop on an M1 MacBook Air and both applications work fine. Illustrator runs via Apple's dynamic binary translator called Rosetta 2 and Photoshop runs natively on the new Macs with the M1 chip since version 22.3.

 

I know this is not much help but I wanted to assure you there are no hardware incompatibily issues that could prevent those software from launching. Have you tried reaching out to the official support pages for help?

J
Jana90Author
Participant
April 4, 2021

Hi @ZooN_ 

 

thank you for your answer! That's really weird then that these apps won't work on my new M1 Macbook. Do you know if there is any way to check if Rosetta has actually been installed? I remember when I opened Illustrator the first time, that I got a popup saying it needs to be installed but I don't really remember that I went through an installation process and also can't find it anywhere on my laptop. I also can't find any link to downlaod Rosetta directly

 

And do you happen to have the links to the official support pages where I can ask for more help? I thought this here was the official support forum haha

Z
ZooN_Correct answer
Inspiring
April 4, 2021

Hi @Jana90 !

 

As far as I know you cannot download Rosetta 2 directly from Apple as it is more of a framework that gets installed automatically on-the-fly once you try and run an app with only Intel binary code available in it (you still need to click on the Install button in the pop-up dialog).

 

An easy way to check if you have Rosetta 2 installed is to see if you have any apps that are Intel only. If they run fine, then you definitely have Rosetta 2 installed on your system.

(You can check the application kind in the info panel; Intel apps run on Rosetta 2 and Universal apps contain both Intel and native M1 binaries.)

 

Having said that, the latest version of Photoshop should still launch on your Mac as it is already a Universal 2 binary, ie. it doesn't need Rosetta 2 at all to launch.

 

Have you tried using the Adobe Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool? It is very thorough but it will reset all your Adobe apps settings so only do it if you're happy to start from scratch. I know it solved most of the issues I have had with Illustrator.

 

As for the official support channels, you can try on helpx.adobe.com and there is a chat window at the bottom right corner of the page.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Cheers

Z

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