Actions updates: New UI, Search and Suggestions AVAILABLE NOW

Report · Apr 23, 2025

Hi folks!

We're excited to release the first steps of the newly improved Actions panel for you to work with.

You can access the Actions panel through Window > Actions.

The improved Actions panel, available now in Photoshop beta, is equipped with thousands of new possibilities to assist you with making easy edits to your images.

Look for these new changes to the Actions panel!

New UI! (with more to come!)
Hundreds of newly bundled actions
Suggested and Featured actions
Search
Action previews
More ways to Play or Apply an action
Undo actions easier with "Single History State"

NEW ACTIONS UI

The Actions panel user interace and experience has been updated with the first of many updates. Currently, the focus is with Actions search, suggestions and playback. There will be more updates coming in the near future, so stay tuned!

SUGGESTED EDITS AND FEATURED ESSENTIALS
The Actions panel analyzes your image and suggests an initial 5 edits Based on your image.

Hover to preview or click to play one or more of the suggested edits.

To see more suggestions, click the refresh button next to Based on your image. After clicking refresh a third time, the image gets reanalyzed in its current state and offers new suggestions.

Featured Essentials contains a list of commonly performed actions that work with most images.

LIVE CANVAS PREVIEW
For most of the new actions, you're able to preview the effect on canvas before you play and commit changes to your document history. Look for the preview icon next to any listed action and mouse over the action in the list to see an on canvas preview. If you like the results you can click to play the action.

SEARCH
Use the search box at the top of the Actions panel to easily find any of the many new actions bundled with Photoshop or custom actions you have created or installed. You can search using natural language (i.e. "make it pop!") or by typing specific action names directly.

APPLY ON SUBJECT OR BACKGROUND
Use the 3 dot ellipses, or right click on an action, to view additional options for playing or applying an action such as only to the image's subject or background.

REVERT TO CLASSIC ACTIONS UI

While we work on create, edit, and detail views of actions, you can create new, edit, or import actions in the Classic Actions view. To switch to Classic view, use the Actions panel flyout menu and choose Classic Actions.

See Actions and the Actions panel to learn more.

BONUS FEATURE: SINGLE HISTORY STATE

To help you undo actions easier with a single undo, now by default, Actions that contain multiple steps will create a single history state rather than individual history states for each step contained in an action. You can adjust this history behavior in the Classic Actions panel Flyout menu > Playback options > Single History State

HELP US IMPROVE ACTIONS! GIVE FEEDBACK!
Try the improved Actions panel and let us know how we can improve it by voting in the beta feedback panel and adding your comments right here in this thread!

Report · Apr 25, 2025

Signed in here to report a bug until I spotted this post with "While we work on create, edit, and detail views..." on my way. Couldn't find any info in PS Beta itself and wondered for a while why the Create button is disabled in the new Actions view. Suggestion: Perhaps in cases like this in the future it would be helpful to add a temporary tooltip on disabled buttons (due to still in development) saying something like "Coming soon! Switch to Classic Actions view to create actions: flyout menu > Classic Actions". Another place to mention temporarily disabled/not yet available features would be the "What's New..." page in PS. At least those were what I intuitively checked first, in that order, until nothing was mentioned and so on and so forth being here with an intention to report a bug...

Otherwise the new view seemed great, and Action search definitely seemed to return some inspiring stuff! Normally I just create and use my own actions, so will probably test it out more once Create feature and Detail views are out.

Report · Apr 28, 2025

Hi @O. Inha !

Really appreciate you coming to the community and providing your feedback. It's a great idea and a tooltip is in there now, but perhaps it takes longer than some might wait to see it. Hopefully we can get that button enabled sooner than later!

Please let us know if you have any additional feedback you'd like to share!

Regards,

Pete

Report · May 05, 2025

Please never delete the classic actions panel.

I would prefer a hybrid, but removing the ability to see the path of an action in the new menu is a very, very odd decision.

Report · Apr 28, 2025

Hi @Pete.Green and Adobe,

I've sent a shortened version of this feedback in the app I really wanted to make sure it gets to the right people. This update does seem to have some great improvements espectially for newbies or people dabbling in photoshop. However, as a creative pro, who has been using Adobe apps for over 20 years, and has a relatively repetitive workflow (like many of us do), I have some big concerns that make me incredibly nervous. I sincerely hope someone from Adobe can assure us of the direction of Actions is not going to remove current functionality.

First and foremost, please do not remove the old way actions work. I rely heavily on actions to reduce the amount of hours I spend working, and to be honest this is one of the big things that keeps me as a photoshop user in comparison to other (cheaper) tools.
HOTKEYS - further to my point above, we need to be able to perhaps pin these actions and map them to hotkeys (or midi keys). I heavily use two Streamdecks with Keyboard Maestro for all my Adobe apps, and not being able to call actions would again increase the amount of hours spent working. I noticed that the "yours" panel doesn't have any hotkeys (which if I'm being honest is anxiety inducing).
The Live View is freakin cool - that's an awesome addition 🙂
Please consider rethinking the whole tabs within a panel that Photoshop seems to be doing more of. Just make a brand new panel so we can decide the layout of Photoshop as what you're doing is increasing the potential amount of steps to take to perform an action, especially if I have to go back and foward from "suggested" to "mine" (this is the same feedback I gave with the new adjustments panel - just keep them as completely separate panels). Oh and don't call them legacy as that just feels like you're going to phase it out.
While the search is a great feature, the thought of having to type in what I want all the time again slows me down. I edit hundreds of images, I have a workflow (like many creative pros)
If you're playing around with the capability of actions I do have feedback on a few things which should be easy and make actions more powerful but I feel like with this new direction Adobe may not care about this much loved/used feature.

While I do love the ability to search and find new actions, I cannot stress enough that if this is being introduced without keeping the current way actions work I won't be upgrading to the latest version.

Sorry!

Sami

Report · Apr 28, 2025

Hi @Sami_PA !

Thank you for trying the Actions panel changes and sharing your intial feedback and nervous concern!

I'll address your great points below:

First and foremost, please do not remove the old way actions work
Absolutely! While working on actions, the MO has been do "first do no harm" relative to current workflows. We're well aware than many professionals rely on actions to speed up repetitive workflows (and more!) and will work to retain all existing workflows folks have with the Actions panel.
HOTKEYS
100%, ability to assign hotkeys is on the list of features that we'll retain, we know how important this is. Eventually we'd like to expand the list to more than the F keys but that won't come right away.
Live View
Awesome! Glad you're enjoying that, we're going to continue building this functionality out. Stay tuned.
tabs within a panel
This is great feedback and we'll need to look into this consideration. Thank you. Hopefully hotkeys, search, and additional improvements we're planning can reduce the need to switch back and forth as often, but it sounds like you're describing a workspace where maybe you can see both suggested and yours views simultaneously.
Typing in Search
This is great feedback and something to keep this in mind as we continue to build out further improvements to the Actions panel. For some that have their own library of hundreds or thousands of custom actions, we hope that search can provide an easy way to filter their own libraries for the task at hand.
Further capabilities for actions
We do care! I know I'd love to hear your thoughts of how Actions panel could be made better for somebody like yourself. Feel free to post here directly or you could even email me at petgreen at adobe dot com. Would love to see where you think we can add function and power to the actions panel.

To your last point, until we're able to get the new actions view to have feature parity with the classic actions, you will be able to switch to the Classic actions view and your workspace preference will be remembered.

Hopefully I've responded to all of your feedback above and that you can take heart in knowing that we're not done and are listening! If I missed any of your concerns please let me know!

Regards,

Pete

Report · Apr 28, 2025

Hi, I don't know if this has been brought up before, but can we also record actions?

Report · Aug 20, 2025

Edit and Create/record actions are workflows that are upcoming. Stay tuned @Piotr Gardecki !

Report · Apr 28, 2025

I have been testing lately and it looks very good!

Report · Apr 30, 2025

Love the look and love the increased functionality especially the option for single history state.

One thing still missing is the ability to continue an action that had a programmed stop. I notice this is not possible as of yet. And I understand this may be complicated if the actions are reflected as a single step in history. Hoping to see it soon.

Report · May 19, 2025

This should be a new tool, and not a replacement for the actions panel. You guys have no idea how some users use the actions panel. First of all, removing the original option of recording your... ACTIONS should be returned. This new version is not an "actions" panel, its an AI suggestions panel. Keep them seperate. Actions are specific events triggered in succession by users for specific purposes. By removing this, you are literally pushing out designers who create action script sequences with buttons for people to use photoshop in a safe (non destructive) way that are not designers or trained on photoshop at all. Some designers may not want to prompt everhting they do. Imagine that. Why is there no section to enabole the "classic" view. Could it be that not every user wants to completely abandon a system they have been using for over a decade and replace it with an ai copilot? Now I have to run an old version of photoshop to do basic things i want automated without having to confer to my forced ai art director.

Report · May 19, 2025

This is a beta, you don't hve to use it, you can use the release version. In fact I think you shouldn't use the beta. But you don't have to use an old version of photoshop

Also you may have overlooked the option to use the classic actions, it's right there in the flyout menu.

Also you may have overlooked the note elsewhere in this forum that the functionality to record actions in this mode is still a work in progress which is why it was not included in this version of the beta.

Report · May 27, 2025

Bonus feature: single history state is nice but would be so much better to have it available as specific action setting rather than global thing for all actions.

Im sure there is some more UI updates coming soon and I cant wait for it enough as currently the new UI for me is totally unusuable:

- action set names always visible on the "button mode" - if I have 10 different actions in 10 separate sets ideally I wanna see just the 10 buttons to run actions,

- new action buttons are very big - i was able to comfortably squeze 30 button on the actions panel in my custom workspace, i can only see about 10 new button without scrolling now:/

Report · Jun 03, 2025

Good day,

I used to have an action where I had files open with transparent backgrounds. I added a layer, then moved it behind my artwork, filled it with white, and saved it using Export > Save for Web (legacy option).

In this version, it is not working. My artwork is coming out white.

I worked in the previous Beta version and still works in the current Photoshop version.

Report · Jun 04, 2025

Hi @AudreyMcKenzieSA would it be possible for you to share your action so the team can see what might be happening? Send to me: shubert@adobe.com

Thanks,

Cory - Photoshop Product Manager

Report · Jun 04, 2025

Hi there, how do I find it to share it the action? Because now it doesn't even want to run.

Report · Jun 05, 2025

Literally says in the first post they are still working on creating and editing actions in the new UI. Your problems are not new actions UI or beta version, doesnt seem like you have any idea about using actions at all so I would strongly recommend you do some self learning first before you start complaining about something you not familiar with:) Have a good day:)

Report · Jun 04, 2025

Additionally, in the new beta view for actions, I am unable to create new actions.

I had to switch to classic actions.

Report · Jun 04, 2025

@AudreyMcKenzieSA this is how you can Save an action and then send that file.

Switch to the Classic Actions view, select Save Action, send that file.