Ben, Smooth is a new feature, and it was no there 10 years ago. You probably confuse it with Simplify, which is still there and works as it used to.

The new smooth tool is terrible. I've used this tool for 10 years and you all basically made it 3x harder to use. I'm not sure what point the current behavior serves. The old tool just worked.

The smooth tool for 2025 version is way too sensitive. The option to control the percentage is too limited. The previous version was much better and easier to control. The new version is out of control! Agree with previous comments on the annoying pop-up.

Move the disruptive pop-up that appears every single darn time you select this tool! It has doubled my time in having to drag it out of the way! Why on earth would you have this box appear directly over what you are wanting to smooth????? It was a simple step to adjust the smoothing degree before, I don't need this pop up every single time. Really horrible change.

I COMPLETELY agree with the complaints about the pesky smoothing tool pop up. Why on earth would we not have control over the position of this menu? I can't think of any other menu whose position is so sticky.

And speaking of smoothing, I DON'T WANT my lines to be smooth, and it seems that the fidelity of the brush tool is getting worse and worse. Even when the brush is set on Accurate, smoothing still occurs. I long for the days when we had powerful controls to adjust line quality. Please stop dumbing it down. Not everyone wants to create perfectly smooth, vector-y looking drawings. It's getting harder and harder to make hand-drawn looking drawings like this one.

The changes to this tool are incredibly annoying and I wish there was a way to go back to the previous version because it was already perfect. The smoothing pop up is obnoxious and constantly blocks the subject Im trying to work on. I also have not been able to find the option for a global selection vs local, so the tool continues to isolate a single edge, forcing me to return to the selection tool and re-select the other elements to begin smoothing again. It's horrible and has made a smooth workflow into something clunky and annoying. Please change the smooth tool back to the way it was before!

The smooth tool pop up conflicts with the touch ring on a wacom tablet. I have the touch ring set to zoom and when using a brush, the smooth tool annoyingly pops up every time a zoom in or out using the touch ring. Cant find a way to disable it. HELP!

THE POP UP WINDOW IS ALWAYS IN THE CENTER OF WHERE YOU ARE WORKING, YOU CAN NOT DISABLE THE POP UP WINDOW, AND MOVING IT IS TEMPORARY. AS SOON AS YOU PRESS S FOR SMOOTH AGAIN, THE POP UP WINDOW HAPPENS IN THE CENTER OF WHERE YOU ARE WORKING. IT DISRUPTS WORK FLOW.

@saniit Samanta: this thread here is old and still escalating – why is Adobe inactive???https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/31150012-improve-graph-chart-tool

I appreciate you adding this tool. I have a couple of issues with this new beta Object > Path > Smooth command/"Smoothing HUD", one minor and one major:

1) The user interface is too small and simple, and doesn't have the option to open an advanced panel like the Simplify tool does. The UI doesn't offer any feedback like telling you the before/after number of anchor points or having an option to show the pre-smoothed lines behind. And you can't type in the smooth % you want - you have to use the slider, which is hard to use and laggy, and sometimes it skips numbers (i.e. one time I used it I couldn't get it to 7% - it kept jumping between 6% and 8% no matter how carefully I moved my mouse).

2) My major issue with it is that, although its results look better than the current Simplify tool, it still doesn't create truly-smooth paths. For more detail on what I mean, see this Adobe Discussion thread I posted, including replies and attached files: https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator-discussions/i-need-pre-2019-object-gt-path-gt-simplify-functionality/m-p/14117484#M382110

Overall, I would prefer it if you'd also (or instead) reintroduce the pre-2019 version of the Simplify tool, which was awesome.

Thank you!

I'd be more than happy to discuss this further with someone from Adobe.

(note: I submitted a similar comment via the What's new in Beta > Rate Features dialog)

yes, auto-smooth function looks great

how do i get out of the hand tool ? I dsont know how it turned on and i dont know how to change it back to the arrow

I am checking it in the latest Beta, and I don’t think it’s a major difference.
Ai still does not highlight the portion of a path that is going to be smoothed while you hold the mouse button/pen down, and there is no way to definitely make targeted point just vanish.
If you are done with it and take no more feedback, it’s fine. But if there is still room for improvement, I’d live to have more feedback on it. Like why do we have to release the key to see the result in the first place?