Updated to PS 26.7 and lost all of my custom actions.

[johng82384995]

When I updated to the newest version of PS, I lost all of my custom actions.

I have been able to find some of the originals online, but not all.

I have tried using Time Machine to see earlier configurations but the actions aare gone there too.

Any suggestions??

[Aleke · Accepted solution]

Hi @johng82384995 — sorry to hear your actions have gone missing after the update. That’s definitely frustrating, and I totally get how annoying it can be when things don’t carry over as expected.

To help prevent this from happening in the future, could you open the Creative Cloud app, click on your profile picture, then head to Preferences > Apps > Photoshop (Advanced Options) and check if the “Import previous settings and preferences” option is turned on? If that’s off, Photoshop won’t bring over your old settings during an update.

Do you happen to remember if you saved your action folders as .atn files before updating? If so, you might be able to recover them. You can also check this folder on your Mac to see if any of your actions are still there: Users/[your username]/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop [version] Settings/

If you’re using Time Machine or another backup tool, you could try rolling that folder back to a point before the update — that might bring your actions back.

Also, if you were using a previous yearly version of Photoshop (like 2024) and just upgraded to 2025, your custom actions might still be stored in the old 2024’s Preferences folder. If you find them there, you can copy them into the 2025 folder, and they should show up again.

For the future, it’s a good idea to organize your custom actions into separate sets (outside of the default set) and export them as .atn files. That way, even if something goes missing, you can easily re-import them.

Let me know what you find — happy to help further if needed!

Cheers,
Alek

[D Fosse]

You can do as above to make sure everything carries over, and that's how you can get your actions back.

But in the interest of good working habits, for the future and anyone else reading, here's what I would recommend:

Always save out your actions to .atn files (and brushes to .abr), and keep them in a safe place. Then you can easily reload them, whether for an update, or in case you need to reset preferences for troubleshooting.

Do not migrate settings if you need Photoshop to always run reliably and without problems. Preferences are prone to corruption because they are rewritten on every application exit. Small errors accumulate, and new application code can bring out latent problems. Preferences contain a lot more than your own user settings, it's the entire application configuration, including lots of under-the-covers parameters.

Corrupt preferences tend to look like application bugs and are frequently mistaken for that.

Take the time to set up fresh preferences when you install a new version. It's ten minutes well spent.

[Stephen Marsh]

@johng82384995 

More on the topic at my blogpost, including possible .psp file recovery from an earlier version folder or TimeMachine backup.

https://prepression.blogspot.com/2017/01/photoshop-custom-action-file-backup.html