I just want to be able to open a context menu when right-clicking layers.

This is quite ridiculous. Every program I've used supports ight click menu's on pretty much anything. Even in Illustrator you can right click on almost everything... except Layers... WHY?!

I genuinely want an explanation as to why this menu doesn't exist in Illustrator. It's such a simple thing, but such a time saver.

How this isn't a feature yet I'll never understand, and is probably one of my biggest gripes and why I HATE using Illustrator in my workflow.

Right click on a layer to perform an action is such a simple thing. Photoshop feels easy and intuitive, but then coming over to illustrator it's like there is no synergy between them. They look the same and act completely different. I think I'm done using Adobe products, not worth the headache for utterly simple things. Especially considering how much adobe actually takes to heart seeing as how this thread is from 2017! It's nearly 2025 and still basic functionality isn't in illustrator.

I cannot right click on a layer to get to the layer options.

I think the chances of this being implemented are slim...look at how long it took to fix things like the distort tool (25+ years) or hyphenation defaulting to "on" (again, decades). It's not an "Adobe MAX headline-grabber" (or so Adobe think), so these requests will sit languishing at the bottom of a pile that "marketing" keep adding stupid gimmicks that nobody will ever use to the top of the pile. In reality, if Adobe ditched all the silly AI/Firefly stuff, perspective stuff (remember that?), 3D stuff etc. in Illustrator, and concentrated on listening to what real-life, professional users actually WANT, we could look forward to an upgrade to a halfway-decent bit of software. As has been reiterated in EVERY software forum for ever, what we always want is these three things:
1. Fix bugs
2. Basic improvements to existing tools
3. Better performance
...and absolutely no new, pointless "features". I can't count the number of times I've seen people comment (for a wide variety of software, but especially the near-death-experience that is Illustrator) that they look forward to the day when a company has the balls to announce "NO NEW FEATURES AT ALL BUT EVERYTHING'S FIXED AND BETTER"* at a press event.

*As far as I know, this did, amazingly, actually happen once, when Apple launched its greatest OS ever - Mac OS10.6:
"The goals of Snow Leopard were improved performance, greater efficiency and the reduction of its overall memory footprint, unlike previous versions of Mac OS X which focused more on new features. Apple famously marketed Snow Leopard as having "zero new features"." and "sales of Snow Leopard were significantly higher than that of its predecessors". Proof if you ever need it, Adobe, that this can be done very successfully.

Agreed. This design flaw makes it difficult to use several Adobe's apps. It doesn't let users to form one consistent workflow when using Adobe's apps like Illustrator, Photoshop, and After Effects. The right-click menu is available in Photoshop and After Effects But not in Illustrator for some reason.
This post was created in 2017. Now it's 2024. It's been ≈7 years but developers did nothing to solve this issue. 😞

Such a fundamental flaw (just because people are only complaining here once a month - Adobe don't realise the hours hundreds of Adobe Illustrator users waste moving over to click on an icon, when an Adobe coder could include this incredibly simple functionality with about a days work (I design apps too, so I know) (it wouldn't even need to be buggy, haha, most of the code is already there) Essentially it is gob-smacking (another reason it feels lazy, is because there is this functionality in adobe photoshop and indiesign)

When I select all the Layers to group them together, it won't happen. Right click doesn't show up.

Unbelievable honestly. No wonder so many people are switching to Affinity Designer. I am fluent in Designer and decided I should be also in Illustrator....no thanks.

Illustrator 2020 - Still no right click in Illustrator. Hard to believe really.

Agreed. Just one of many oversights and stupidities with Adobe apps.

Allow us to right-click in the Layers panel. Photoshop has had it for ages, why doesn't Illustrator?
Overall I would like it to be more like the layer window in Photoshop i.e. a Transparency option, better drag and drop and Groups.

It's such a pain how unresponsive it feels.

I assume this is because Illustrator was originally written for the one-button-mouse Macintosh, and I'd imagine the core code has not been updated since then. It certainly feels like a 31-year-old app.

It is infuriating to have to do everything in the layers palette via the stupid top-right menu, and ridiculous that right-clicking a layer does absolutely nothing. Same with other palettes such as Links and Styles.