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Ghostqix
Participant
April 4, 2025
Answered

Long delays during save after 29.4 update

  • April 4, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 746 views

Ever since the Illustrator 29.4 update, my documents are taking way too long to save. It doesn't seem to matter whether the docment being saved is complex or comically simple. The pattern of behavior is consistent:

  1. I save the document (command - s).
  2. The system waiting icon (beachball) shows for 20 to 30 seconds.
  3. The tab text for the document being saved finally changes to "Document Title @ 100% (CYMK/Preview) Saving..." for a brief moment, and...
  4. The document is saved.

 

The delay in step 2 is the new wrinkle. I'm running Illustrator 29.4 on an Intel iMac 2020 with MacOS Sequoia 15.3.2. The Activity Monitor shows that there is plenty of memory available. During the save delay, the Activity Monitor briefly shows Adobe Illustrator in a "not responding" state. All the documents that I'm working with are all being saved in Illustrator 2020 format (.ai) without PDF compatibility checked, and they all exhibit the delay at save time. I've already tried restarting Illustrator and restarting the iMac.

 

Any ideas?

 

Correct answer Anubhav M

The Desktop and Documents Folder option is not checked for iCloud Drive. 

I tried Illustrator on another account on this system, creating a new file and saving changes to it. There was no delay in the save on the other account.


Hello @Ghostqix,

Thanks for confirming. To prevent this from happening in your primary account, kindly try the following steps to manually reset Illustrator's preferences and let us know if they help:

For macOS

• 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 29 Settings folders to Adobe Illustrator.old, com.adobe.illustrator.old and Adobe Illustrator 29 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:

 

Image

 

 

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

Looking forward to hearing from you.
Anubhav

1 reply

Anubhav M
Community Manager
Anubhav MCommunity Manager
Community Manager
April 4, 2025

Hello @Ghostqix,

Would you mind checking if this happens when the files you are working on are from a specific folder location (internal/removable/network drive or cloud-synced folder like Google Drive/Dropbox/etc.), and running Illustrator under a different administrator account (macOS) and checking if it helps?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

 

Anubhav

G
GhostqixAuthor
Participant
April 5, 2025

Thank you for the reply.

 

All the files open in Illustrator are on a local drive (the boot drive for this iMac), and within the home directory of my macOS admin account (specifically, down in subdirectories within the ~/Documents tree). Consequently, I don't think it's permission-related, or the save itself would be denied entirely, not succeed after a long delay. 

 

With the delay happening at the start of the save process, I'm wondering if Illustrator is trying to connect to some Adobe cloud service and waiting to time out before saving the file, even though the file is local and doesn't require the cloud service. 

 

Puzzling.

G
GhostqixAuthor
Participant
April 9, 2025

Hello @Ghostqix,

Thanks for confirming. To prevent this from happening in your primary account, kindly try the following steps to manually reset Illustrator's preferences and let us know if they help:

For macOS

• 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 29 Settings folders to Adobe Illustrator.old, com.adobe.illustrator.old and Adobe Illustrator 29 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:

 

Image

 

 

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

Looking forward to hearing from you.
Anubhav


The preferences clear appears to have fixed the save delay problem. Of course, now I have 10 years of customization tweaks and palettes to recreate, but <shrug/> sometimes a housecleaning is necessary. Thank you for your help.

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