Astute Manager: The ‘traffic light’ panel that keep your Illustrator assets up to date

If you’ve ever opened a shared Illustrator file and found outdated swatches or missing brushes, you know how frustrating version drift can be. The Astute Manager panel was built to solve exactly that problem by keeping your team’s shared assets perfectly in sync.

A traffic light for your workflow

The Astute Manager panel works like a traffic light inside Adobe Illustrator. It shows a clear green or red indicator that tells you whether your team assets are current or need attention.

• Green light: Everything is up to date. You’re using the latest versions of all installed Swatches, Graphic Styles, and Brushes.

• Red light: A new revision of an Asset Pack is available in the Astute Manager. It’s time to review and update.

This quick visual cue gives you instant feedback without interrupting your creative process.

How the Astute Manager panel works

Why Teams love it

When multiple designers work together, consistency is key. The Astute Manager panel helps teams stay aligned by showing real-time updates to shared assets.

Imagine your brand team updates a color palette or Illustrator symbol. Instead of emailing reminders or searching through folders, you’ll see a red indicator appear in the panel. Click See Changes and the Astute Manager will open to show what’s new.

Works in the background

The panel relies on Astute Manager version 4 or higher. As long as the Astute Manager is signed in to an active Astute Graphics account and running in your system tray (Windows) or menu bar (macOS), the panel will function automatically. You don’t need to keep the full Astute Manager window open.

You also don’t need an Astute Manager Pro subscription. The panel works for both free and paid accounts.

Behind the scenes, the panel automatically checks for updates every minute or so. You can also click Refresh at any time to check manually.

Setting It Up

To get started:

1. Install Astute Manager version 4 or later and sign in.

2. The Astute Manager panel will install automatically when the Astute Manager runs for the first time, as long as Illustrator is closed.

3. In Illustrator, open the panel by going to Window > Astute Graphics > Astute Manager.
   
   

Once it’s open, you’ll see your traffic light indicator right inside Illustrator. We recommend docking this panel in your Workspace so it’s always visible.