Illustrator is performing slow on macOS Catalina 10.15.7

[melissa_samworth]

I've come back to Illustrator after a few years of not using it (I downloaded the free trial from Creative Cloud, so it's the most recent version). Now things are so buggy that it's not useable. The program almost instantly goes into this stalled mode where it redraws very slowly. Then it won't let me quit... I have to force quit every time.

I've spent four hours troubleshooting things (resetting prefs, clearing disk space, and so on), and nothing has changed. Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

(MacOS Catalina 10.15.7 on an early 2013 Macbook Pro)

[Simmer1]

Hi,

Check out this link: https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/user-guide.html/illustrator/using/crash-file-data-recovery.ug.ht...

have a look at the GPU section first maybe.

Thanks

[melissa_samworth]

Thank you @Simmer1 ! However, this link just redirects and leads me to the welcome guide (https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/user-guide.html/illustrator/using/welcome.ug.html)

[melissa_samworth]

I turned off GPU, and turned off saving recovery data. Same problem remains. I notice that the problem only starts when I use the selection tool. That tool gets super weird and slow, and then it essentially goes unresponsive.

[melissa_samworth · Accepted solution]

All fixed! After uninstalling and reinstalling

[Ashutosh_Mishra · Accepted solution]

Hi Melissa,

Sorry to hear about your experience. In addition to the suggestions given earlier, you may also try the troubleshooting steps given on this community post(https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator/resolve-slow-performance-and-unexpected-behaviors-in-illu...) for such scenarios.

Hope they help.

Regards,

Ashutosh