How do I get my Adobe Illustrator back to normal?

If Illustrator is acting up, don’t worry you’re not stuck. One of the quickest ways to fix odd behavior, tool issues, or performance problems is to reset your Illustrator Preferences. 

In this guide, you’ll learn how to safely reset, back up, and restore your Settings, so you can get Illustrator back to the way you like it. 

Note: Resetting removes your custom Workspaces, Preferences, and Keyboard Shortcuts. But you can reapply them manually or restore them from a Backup. You can learn more about How to back up your Adobe Illustrator Preferences in this article.

Why would I reset Illustrator Preferences? 

Resetting clears out corrupted Illustrator Settings and restores Illustrator to its default state. It’s a fast and reliable way to fix: 

• Missing or broken panels

• Unexpected performance problems

• Issues when upgrading to new versions 

• Plugin issues

• Strange UI glitches

• General instability or unexpected behavior

It’s easy to do and can often get things running smoothly again in just a few minutes. 

What changes after I reset? 

After resetting, Illustrator launches with default Settings. You’ll see the standard welcome screen, and Astute Graphics will remind you to re-enable the Advanced Toolbar so all tools appear. 

You’ll likely need to: 

• Reopen and dock your panels (from the Window menu)

• Save your custom Workspace again

• Reassign any Keyboard Shortcuts

• Adjust your Illustrator Preferences

• Then quit and restart Illustrator so that all those changes are stored

Illustrator doesn’t update the main Preferences files after a change until the application has been fully closed.

Where are the Illustrator Preferences files? 

The two files to securely store are: 

• Adobe Illustrator Prefs 

• Adobe Illustrator Cloud Prefs 

On macOS: 

1. In Finder, click Go > Library (hold Option if Library is hidden)

2. Go to: Preferences > Adobe Illustrator [version] Settings > [language] > … 

On Windows: 

1. Navigate to: Users > [your name] > AppData > Roaming > Adobe > Adobe Illustrator [version] Settings > [language or 32/64-bit] 

For the full Illustrator version/naming list, please refer to the Illustrator Wikipedia page.