Woah, crazy there isn't a way to do this. It's so embarrassing to accidentally save a pdf with default settings and have hidden objects appear when the client tries to print. If you're needing to save several projects a day, it's so easy to forget to change the option once. I NEVER want to use Illustrator Default, and the way it makes invisible layers appear for printing is ridiculous. How is this not an option yet? This thread was posted five years ago.

Too many resources spent on their marketing and customer-money-squeezing department and not enough on making their product professional-customer friendly?

While we wait for this change, we can use a script to save the file in the desired PDF preset.

Just save a JSX file with this code:

function saveAsPDF() {
var pdfFile = new File(app.activeDocument.path + "/" + app.activeDocument.name.split('.')[0] + '.pdf');
var pdfOptions = new PDFSaveOptions();
pdfOptions.pDFPreset = "[PDF/X-1a:2001]"; //insert the preset name as it's written in Illustrator
app.activeDocument.saveAs(pdfFile, pdfOptions);
}
saveAsPDF()

Then run the script by adding it to your Illustrator scripts folder or other methods like AutoHotKey, drag and drop... I use Streamdeck to run it.

To not have the warning every time you try to run the script, create this single time use script:

#target illustrator

app.preferences.setBooleanPreference("ShowExternalJSXWarning", false);

My solution involves Applescript. Read below if you use Mac and are interested in using Sripts to solve this issue.

Okay so it appears that the admin on this thread is not understanding the point of the topic.
The point is not which settings are selected! That is not the point!

The point is that we want to have our own custom pdf preset be the one that is automatically selected when we go to save a pdf. I know it sounds like a stupid nitpick to have to use your mouse to go to the dropdown menu and change the preset to your own preset. It's only a second or 2 extra, but like many people have said on this forum; when you have to do this dozens of times a day or even a hundred times a day it gets very frustrating! It would be so much easier for your preset to automatically be selected when you are about to save a pdf and all you have to do is hit enter. That's the dream. We designers are obsessed with automation!

So Illustrator has failed us and they don't seem to understand what it is we even want. Now what?
My solution has been to go around this issue by creating a script. For anyone who is unfamiliar with Scripts, Script is kind of like code that you can write in your operating system that has the ability to control certain functions in your computer or applications, such as Illustrator. Enough mumbo jumbo, I created a script to use in illustrator which allows me to bypass the pdf prompts and options! I just created a pdf preset that fits my needs and saved it. Obviously it isn't the default, which is the problem. So my script takes care of that. If you need help understanding how to apply a script just look around online. It's not as hard as it seems. Anyway if anyone wants to dabble in the world of applescripting and solve this issue, the script code will be pasted below. Just replace the text within the quotation marks in the section "Your Preset Name Here" with the name of YOUR pdf preset. Copy all text between the colon at the end of this paragraph and the paragraph marked Summary. Script below:

set targetFolder to choose folder
set targetPath to targetFolder as string

tell application "Adobe Illustrator"

set user interaction level to never interact

set documenti to current document

set documentCount to documenti

set documentName to name of documenti

save documenti in file (targetPath & documentName) as pdf with options {class:PDF save options, PDF preset:"Your Preset Name Here"}

end tell

Summary
That is all you will need to make the system do what you need it to do. Now it's up to you to figure out how to apply it and automate it using illustrator actions to maximize efficiency in your pdf saving workflow. This is not the perfect solution but it is what I have used to get around this issue due to Adobe's incompetence or lack of understanding on this subject. It is not the perfect solution! I still have a few bugs I encounter sometimes and I derived this script from one I found online and made some changes for it to function better and worked out a few bugs. It is imperfect, but in some ways, it is even better than what I imagine would be Adobe's solution. Just a matter of taking it and working with it till you get what you want out of it. Good luck!

yes please

I would like this! I think Doug is referring to what I would LOVE... which is when creating a document in .ai format, for local print company print-ready files, they require a PDF, I have a preset that adds crop marks, etc. I "Save a copy..." for this purpose MANY MANY times a week. This would be HUGE if Adobe could setup to allow me to choose what is the default PDF preset that appears in the final PDF dialog box when saving.

What would save us all a LOT of time would be a "FAST PDF" proof based on active artboard.... i.e., you click on PDF symbol in the toolbox and ai uses default pdf setting and save as pdf loads and automatically gives you the save to menu to desktop (letting you assign a name or just hit return). This would be the best case scenario, as a stop-gap If someone here can write a script to do this, please post a response here (with a command-shift-something this would also save a ton of time)

Anonymous: you probably work in a relaxed, controlled environment - many of us don't have that luxury. In any given day I may have to create as many as 100+ pdf PROOFS to send to clients. That's not an exaggeration. Life would be easier if there was a "quick save to pdf" or the ability to have a preset AUTOMATICALLY loaded for pdfs. ALL my clients only need a low res pdf as a proof, but the default is an insane config that saves a file that is up to 3X bigger than the combined components in the file. Way back when Pagemaker had a fast "save this page as pdf" button, that would be ideal. But if not that we want to config the default "save page as" so we can just save a pdf and move on and not have to pull down menus. And no we are not crying about something small, if you worked in a fast paced high stress world you'd see the benefit of saving time on EVERY single job. Plus there's the times where you're in a hurry and pull down to the wrong setting and hit SAVE and have to redo it.

I am not sure i understand this right... but perhaps you are talking about saving custom Adobe pdf presets?
If yes it's pretty simple: when "saving as pdf" dialog is open you have the default presets menu that are impossible or hard to change permanently, but after you manually edit a preset you just press that little "download" icon on the right of the menus and it will open a dialog for saving your CUSTOM PRESET - name it and save it and it will stay there as one of the presets.
P.S. in order to delete (a custom) preset go to Edit->Adobe pdf presets (choose and delete using the trash bin icon)

If you guys talking about changing the default presets - yes it could be useful if at least it DIDN'T APPEAR ON TOP OF THE LIST of the presets, because hey - no one is using that "illustrator default" preset, you have created an app for designers, maybe you should check with them what's the most common preset used, and still not to have it appear on top of the list because it's quite annoying.
p.p.s and can we find a way to bypass the annoying additional dialog when saving .ai file as another .ai file? really, no one ever touches that one either, so many many useless clicks happen in the universe.

Totally agree - come on adobe, listen to your customers - save to .pdf (set smallest size to default) would save me hours a week.

This has been annoying me too. Seems like it would be such an easy thing to do and it would help users so much!

In "Save Adobe PDF" option dialog box, when saving as pdf, please, remember my last Preset selection as I have to keep reselection "Press Quality", for example, every time, because it always shows the default "Illustrator Default" preset.
it would be a time saving not clicking two more times in the saving process.

Absolutely! How easy it is forget to output settings to include profiles when you are in a hurry!
MisprintsRus

Great idea!!! I wish they'd fix the little things like this, rather than the yearly updates that add nothing but the need to update my MacOS on an old machine that can't handle another update.

The adobe developer team produce more bugs.
But the program surface now: blink blink.
Good work!

I'm saving 50+ PDF's per day and none are Illustrator default. This would make life super easy.

Someone on the dev team is really dug in on this one. I had a really busy day yesterday and saved almost 70 pdfs (not including save overs). And now I'm dealing with the program bug that if you do a save-as and change the file name, the next pdf is still the old file name... plus the copy copy copy copy etc if you resave a lot in the same file. Makes me miss Illustrator 1.1 thu 9 when the program did everything it was supposed to do in a sensible manner. I'll have 34 years of ai use this October... man this one twists me up.

An update today, and still this feature is missing. It has been available in InDesign for years! Adobe, are you listening to your users?

It seems by Neeraj's reply that they expect us to save/open/edit/save in PDF instead of using illustrator's own native file format.

PDF is not and never was intended to be an editable file format. It is an end-use format. Saving your illustrator data as "private data" within the PDF is, quite frankly, idiotic.

Running an "illustrator default / illustrator editing capabilities ON" PDF through preflight (PDFtoolbox or the like) and changing anything about the file completely destroys the link between the preflighted PDF data and the private data (opening the PDF in illustrator afterwards will *NOT* show you the changes the preflight made to the file)

Do yourselves a favor and just turn it off. I would say "and leave it off" but since it defaults to being ON and we're unable to select a default... well, that's what this feature request is about.

@ Alex, I have noticed the same thing in the last two Illustrator updates. I have actions setup to save PDF's for a particular workflow and they *used* to save with their selected joboptions correctly, but now they're doing what export for screens does (a bug) that just uses the most recently used 'save as' PDF settings, regardless of anything else.

I have to be careful to manually save a pdf with the settings I want and then run my actions.

how is this still not a thing? Make it happen Adobe!