Never Closing Down Adobe Illustrator: A Solution to Unstable Performance on Mac

I'm excited to share my experience and solution with Adobe Illustrator's performance issues on a Mac, which I hope will be helpful if you're experiencing similar problems.

My system exceeds the requirements for Illustrator. I'm running Big Sur on a MacBook Pro laptop that's only a couple of years old, with 32 GB Ram and 250 GB free on the hard drive, all backed by a compatible GPU. Despite these robust specs, I still encountered issues with Adobe Illustrator's performance on my Mac.

After hours on the phone with Adobe support, speaking with three different representatives, and spending several days troubleshooting, I finally found a solution to the problem. In this article, I'll share what I learned and how you can resolve your own issues with unstable Adobe Illustrator performance on a Mac.

The problems started when Illustrator became increasingly unstable, often crashing or freezing when performing even simple tasks such as creating patterns, placing TIFF files, or using the Live Paint Bucket tool. The GPU mode would sometimes flash blue, while at other times it would automatically switch to CPU mode due to minor provocations.

I tried various troubleshooting steps before resorting to a tech support call, including restarting my computer, uninstalling and reinstalling Adobe Illustrator, and deleting my preferences. Despite these efforts, the issues persisted.

After speaking with senior tech support at Adobe, I learned that another update had resolved the problem temporarily, but it reappeared with the recent 25.3.1 update. It was then that I discovered the solution to my issue.

Never closing down adobe illustrator